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"(UMOhlL'' 



BY 

SHELDON LEAVITT, M. D. 

Author of " Psycho-Therapy ;" " The Absent Treatment of Disease ;" "Paths 

to the Heights;" Editor of Thought ; President Chicago 

Psycho-Physiological Society, etc. 



MAGNUM BONUM CO. 
4665 Lakb Avb., Chicago. 



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jUBRAHYofOGN0RSSS| 
Two Copies Heco.'vA: 

JAN 31 1908 



OLASS A AXc. ftu, 
OO FY B. 8 



Copyright, 1908. 
By Sheldon Leavitt, M. Dc 



PART ONE 



THE ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS 



' I touched the crarment-hem of truth, 
Yet saw not all its splendor." 



Preface 

In assembling material for this volume I have in- 
cluded considerable matter originally embraced in 
1 'Psycho-Therapy," which, after passing through two 
editions, is now out of print. At the same time, this 
volume is sufficiently unlike * 'Psycho-Therapy" to 
warrant its presentation as an entirely new work. 

The purpose which herein finds expression is not 
only to elaborate a system of definite instruction in the 
Fundamentals of psychic Self-help, but also to qualify 
those who make the book "the man of their counsel" 
to become Healers of others. 

To many I am sure it will also become a Finger- 
board to general Success and an inspiration to Noble 
Living. 

Sheldon Leavitt. 



(5) 



Insist on yourself ; never imitate. 

—Emerson. 



(6) 



THE ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS. 

WILL AS THE PSYCHIC FACTOR. 

From both a theoretical and clinical study of 
the subject, I have been led to believe that suc- 
cess in any line of human endeavor is dependent 
upon two cardinal mental and spiritual elements, 
namely, Desire and Faith. 

Let us analyze these. 

Desire. 

We cannot expect to get what we do not 
desire, and what we do not believe can be had. 
The desire must be intense. The wise sub-con- 
sciousness does not respond to anything less 
ardent. It has to be a desire that takes hold of 
us with vigor, and represents the earnest, honest 
impulse of our being. This is a place where 
strong feeling is of service. If there is a sense 
of distress for the lack of the thing desired; if 
there is true yearning of soul, moving one to reach 
out strongly for what is craved, then, and only 
then, is this essential of success fully met. We 
have all seen many who appeared to have no such 
desire for health, and hence have continued in 
their distress. 

Faith. 

On the side of the other element, faith, it 
is not enough to say, "Show me results and I 
will accept them." One without faith can do that. 
It is easy enough to believe a thing when it has 
been demonstrated to our senses ; but it is not so 

(7) 



8 



THE ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS. 



easy to believe something of whose existence we 
have no sensible proof, but of the existence of 
which, nevertheless, we are assured by reason or 
intuition. 

From a study of phenomena we are justified in 
inferring that man is in a stage of development 
where, he is coining to know that he is possessed 
of conscious power over his entire physical organ- 
ism, as well as much of his environment, and is 
gradually bringing that power into obedient 
action. 

I am daily becoming more impressed with the 
value of confidence, and self-confidence at that, as 
the final element in the dynamic circuit of human 
expression. It characterizes capability in all life's 
affairs. Without it education is powerless to 
serve the most earnest as it should. All other 
qualifications fall flat when not animated by it. 



Blind Faith. 

But blind faith is not worthy of 
commendation. The commander whose reason 
for confidence is his simple trust in God or in 
luck, with the better guns and larger numbers 
against him, may win, but the chances are that he 
will not. If placed in such a situation by force of 
circumstances and compelled to fight, assurance 
is the proper spirit to hold; but that does not 
negative the inadvisability of accepting it from 
choice. He who neglects preparation and rests 
his faith on the forces intended to work through 
mental means, will at times perform startling feats, 
but is, in general, irregular and untrustworthy. 

Dependence on sub-conscious illumination 
alone, belongs to a lazy soul. 



CHARACTERISTICS OF FAITH. 



The whole wealth of the subjective mind is 
ours for use, but it serves us best when united 
with conscious qualification. 

Characteristics oi Faith. 

Confidence gives stability 
and power. Who can withstand the man of tow- 
ering faith ? 

Conceit touches the mere surface of things, but 
faith reaches the very heart of them. 

Doubt says, "I hope so." Faith says, "I know." 

Doubt says, "I will trv." Faith says, "I can and 
I will." 

Doubt is a man with his hands in his pockets. 
Faith is a man with hand on pen and plow. 

Doubt passes along with his eyes on the 
ground. Faith has his eyes on the hills, along 
the caps of which glow the warm hues of the 
morning. 

Doubt lies abed, not believing that success will 
come. Faith rises early to greet its approach. 

Doubt says, U A bird in the hand is worth two 
in the bush. " Faith prepares to serve a whole 
flock of birds at a feast to his friends. 

Doubt says to the tale-bearer, "What a fool I 
have been, to take this course ! " Faith goes on 
without a word. 

Doubt listens to discouraging reports and ex- 
claims, "Just as I expected." Faith says, "I do 
not believe them. All obstacles will be sur- 
mounted. " 

Doubt looks discouraged, but Faith carries a 
cheerful countenance in the face of disaster. 

Doubt says, "There are lions in the way." 
Faith answers, "Aye, but they are chained," 



10 THE ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS. 

Doubt says, "It is useless. We may as well 
give up." Faith says, "The prize looks nearer 
than ever." 

Doubt says, " I know a man who followed this 
way and failed." Faith says, "What of it? It is 
the spirit in man that determines results. I shall 
win. " 

Doubt says, " I fear death ends all. " Faith says, 
"There is no death. What we call death is only 
a new birth. I shall never die." 

Doubt fears ; Faith believes. 

Doubt cries in terror, "My feet sink in quick- 
sand." Faith smiles and says, "It is only to the 
ankles. " 

" Farewell, " says Doubt. " Au revoir !" exclaims 
Faith. 

"Breakers ahead/' says Doubt. "All's well!" 
sings faith. 

When trouble comes, Doubt fears he is for- 
gotten, and thinks God unjust. Faith says, 
"Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." 

We could ask for no better evidence of the 
essential character of the elements, Desire and 
Faith ; but I would not have you think me incon- 
siderate enough to believe that desire and faith 
are the only elements involved in success. They 
are held to be the cardinal psychic elements ; but 
there are many other factors concerned in the 
action, and, to succeed, it is necessary to consider, 
and, in a measure, utilize them. 

The Role of Will. 

Though desire and faith are 
cardinal elements in success, they remain rela- 
tively powerless until brought into action by the 



THE ROLE OF WILL. 11 

dynamic force of Will. It is important for us to 
give this truth careful consideration. 

Lexicographers have been greatly puzzled sat- 
isfactorily to define the term will. The effects of 
will are apparent in every move we make, and in 
every consecutive thought we think. 

But what is will itself? 

I move my arm in the direction determined by 
my thought. Now, what is the mental action 
leading up to and enforcing that physical action ? 
I reply, It is attention given to the ideal with a 
purpose to express it in motion; it is attention 
accompanied by the unquestioning assurance that 
the thing will be done. 

Are we not, then, justified in saying that will is 
purposive attention linked to and proceeding 
front, mental assurance? It is attention that 
has a movement, or a set of movements, for its 
object. 

In this connection I beg you not to forget that 
it is the subconsciousness which executes every 
volition, whether the action be commonly recog- 
nized as voluntary or involuntary, — whether, to 
be technical, the muscles involved in the movement 
are of the striated or unstriated variety. 

Physiologists are not prepared to admit it, but 
it is true, that, in a sense, all action is volun- 
tary. In one department of physical expression, 
to be sure, the response is prompt, and in another 
tardy, while between these there is a field in 
which response is not as prompt as in the first 
instance, nor as dilatory as in the second. 

This leaves us to understand that conscious 
will is the stimulus of action, and that subcon- 
sciousness is the executive that carries out the 
obligation thus laid upon it. 



12 THE ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS. 

Having gone so far, we can see that the 
promptness and energy of an action, whether of 
the differentiated voluntary system or not, de- 
pends in great measure on the power of thejstim- 
ulus, and the consequent necessity of giving great 
attention, in practice, to that particular feature of 
the problem. 

It is left us to determine how to bring the stim- 
ulus to bear with the best effect. 

Now, let us go a step further. 

I have attempted to show that the cardinal 
elements of success, anywhere, and everywhere, 
are Desire and Faith, I have attempted to show 
that WILL is really the dynamic principle in the 
whole process. 

Now, how are we to reconcile these apparent 
contradictions ? 

My idea is that the potential elements, Desire 
and Faith, become dynamic or active, in WILL. 
For example, we earnestly desire health, and as 
earnestly believe that we shall have it ; or, better 
still, we believe that it is essentially ours. Having 
gone so far, the energies of Desire and Faith unite 
to express themselves in Will, which reaches forth 
and takes the object sought. We can desire a 
thing and believe that we shall have it, to the end 
of time. The object of our desire and faith recedes 
before us as does the horizon before the traveler. 
It is only when the energies of Will are invoked 
that the whole process comes to a climax. 

Let us form a diagram of this mental conception. 
I will write "Desire," and beneath it, at a little 
distance, I will write "Faith." Then, over at the 
right, at a point midway between Desire and Faith, 
I will write "Will " Then, since both Desire and 
Faith focus in Will, I draw converging lines from 




THE ROLE OF WILL. 13 



them to Will, thus plainly indicating the mental 
idea. 



WILL 



Jesus and his disciples furnished conspicuous 
examples of this very action. Weeping had Jesus 
come to the grave of Lazarus. He had declared 
to his disciples that Lazarus was not dead, but 
sleeping, and it appeared that he was about to 
prove the truth of his claim. At the tomb the 
critical moment arrives. 

The waiting multitude stand expectant. 

It is evident that there is something about to be 
done. 

There is to be a great victory or an ignominious 
defeat. 

Jesus does not pray for power, for his psychic 
energy was tremendous and he knew it. 

He had been groaning in spirit because of the 
pent-up forces impatient to break forth into ex- 
pression. 

The climax approaches ; and how is it reached ? 
There is no petition for help, no waiting for energy 
to adjust itself. 

Listen ! 

In intense, but subdued, tones, he says, "Father, 
I thank thee that Thou hast heard my prayer ; I 
knew that Thou always hearest me ; but I say this 
for the sake of the people standing near, so that 
they may believe that Thou hast sent me as Thy 
Messenger. " 

The stone bad been rolled away from the mouth 



14 THE ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS. 

of the tomb, at Jesus* command, and the people 
stood in breathless silence. 

Then, behold, there leaped upwards, like the 
flame of an explosion, the irresistible WILL, as 
he shouted aloud the command which voiced that 
tremendous soul energy, and fell with effect on the 
dull ears of the sleeper, "LAZARUS! COME 
OUT!" and behold the dead walked forth in 
life. 

It was always thus in the work of this great 
healer. He spake "as one having authority," and 
in like manner must we, as healers both of our- 
selves and others, think and speak, if we] would 
get the best results. 

The Way to Attainment. 

To be sure assurance, faith, 
self-reliance and will are to be acquired but slowly. 
It takes time to build a structure that is substantial 
and imposing. In our early experiences we need, 
as does the child, support, encouragement and 
instruction ; but psychic power once acquired en- 
ables us to command with success. Why should 
one who is seeking mastery, passively solicit? 
Let him speak the healing word with power and 
assurance. 

There are those among my readers who have 
not risen to the height of command over them- 
selves and the unpleasant influences about them, 
owing to the fact that they have been holding the 
attitude of submission instead of authority. 

/ have no sympathy with the passivity which 
makes of man a mere plaything of the forces 
about him. He was made to COMMAND. 

We have to do something besides sitting and 



AN ELEMENT OF SELF-DEVELOPMENT. 15 

dreaming: there has to be resolute TAKING 
of what we want. Said Jesus, "The kingdom of 
heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it 
by force. " This utterance has puzzled theologians. 
A paraphrase of it would read, "The kingdom of 
the unseen is open to invasion by the resolute, and 
the resolute take it. " Jesus said this with evident 
approval, and it indicates the most effectual 
method of getting what we want. 

But remember that he who would command, 
must have commanding qualities. 

Will as An Element 
in Self=Development. 

What I have said of will as a 
factor in cure applies as well to ourselves as to 
others. It is the most efficient kind of auto-sug- 
gestion. 

As strong men and women we shotild sta7td, 
not in the attitude of suppliants, but of masters. 
Self is first to be brought into subjection and 
then do we become well fitted to set in motion the 
healing energies of those who apply to us for aid. 
I commend to you what I myself have prac- 
ticed. Many a time, when in the throes of a per- 
sonal struggle, have I calmly awaited an intimation 
of the wise course, and then, when it came, even 
though its execution appeared to involve difficulty 
and danger, have I paced the floor with clinched 
fist and set lips, indicative of the intensity of my 
feelings, and audibly declared, "It shall be done! 
I will prevail ! " 

"When you have tried and tried and tried 
"A thousand times and then once more, 
"And still must humbly stand aside, 
"Defeated, battered and heart-sore, 



16 THE ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS. 



" Think not that you have done your best, 
" And do not yet permit despair 
" To find an entrance to your breast ; 
" Let hope be still imprisoned there. 
" God gives us WILLS to do or die, 
"He sets the tasks we must assail; 
" And though a thousand times we try 
"And though a thousand times we {ail, 
" Our best is never done 
" Till we have fairly won. 1} 



PART TWO. 



The PRINCIPLES of PSYCHO-THERAPY 



"When the distinction was first drawn, 'ARTES' 
meant the things one could do, and * SCIENTAE* the things 
one knew. 

(17) 



I 



The Present Status of Medicine 



(19) 



CHAPTER I. 

THE PRESENT STATUS OF MEDICINE. 

Drug Medication Does Not Com- 
mand Professional Confidence. 

Not very long ago an 
eminent practitioner of the dominant school of 
medicine said in my hearing to a class of stu- 
dents whom he was addressing on the subject of 
typhoid fever, with a case from the hospital 
wards lying before him, "Gentlemen: Concern- 
ing treatment, let me say that the very best 
treatment for this disease is plenty of fresh air; 
little, or no, food; and no medicine whatever. 
You may have to administer some drugs to ap- 
pease the anxiety of friends, but I assure you 
that we have no medicines that are of any practi- 
cal service in this disease. " 

"But, "says the homeopath, "that admission 
was from an old-school practitioner. The new 
school can offer better testimony." 

Can they ? We shall all do well to give more 
analytical study to our resources as disclosed in 
the light of results fairly attributable to remedial 
action. 

The following has been taken from the annual 
address of the President of the New York State 
Homeopathic Medical Society, delivered at a 
recent meeting: 

(21) 



22 PRESENT STATUS OF MEDICINE 



"This is a scientific age and we must conform to the 
methods of scientists to arrive at conclusions of any 
value. Today, statistics alone will answer this pur- 
pose. Each one of us believes that certain diseases 
run a more favorable course and the death rate is much 
less under homeopathic treatment. But where are our 
statistics to demonstrate this to the world at large? 
Echo answers where? 

11 Many years ago, when homeopathy was introduced 
into the hospitals of Vienna, when drugging and blood- 
letting was the practice in the treatment of pneumonia, 
the death rate promptly fell under the new treatment, 
and those statistics have often been used to demon- 
strate the efficacy of the practice. But what happened? 
A skeptic arose who had little faith in the infinitesimal 
dose, and who tried treating a certain number of cases 
with no medicine whatever, with the result that his death 
rate was practically identical with that under homeo- 
pathic administration. Thereupon the treatment of no 
medicine was substituted for the homeopathic, and con- 
tinues with few modifications to the present day." 

Enthusiasm over the curative power of the 
remedies commonly used in serious diseases is a 
characteristic of the Neophyte in medicine. This 
one, with consummate faith in the action of his 
little-tried remedies, sallies forth to meet the 
enemy. In preliminary skirmishes he meets fair 
success. He praises his armamentarium and re- 
joices in the skill with which he utilizes it. But 
when you see the same man a few years after- 
wards you find him cautious, and conservative, 
and deliberate: quite unlike the enthusiast that 
he was. 

To be sure this is not true of all, for there 
are some, possessing small discrimination, who 
appear to gather their conclusions from the 
realm of fancy rather than of fact. Most phy- 
sicians of mature experience, with a fair measure 
of discriminative and deductive power, feel most 



DRUGS HAVE CURATIVE VALUES 23 

acutely their relative helplessness in the presence 
of portentous disease. 

The truth is that the best medical skill can do 
little else than rectify minor physical ills by 
means of drug remedies and modify the course 
of the major ones. 

Fatal disease appears to ' ' take the bit in its 
teeth" and gallop resolutely onward to the end of 
the route, no matter how frantically we may tug 
at the reins. 

I have seen many medical practitioners 
become enthusiasts over the assumed marvelous 
action of drug remedies. I have heard them 
relate, in radiant terms, how they * 'brought 
through" patient after patient supposedly lost in 
the mazes of disease, attributing "no action " to 
one remedy and "pronounced action" to an- 
other, when, in truth, a mind capable of properly 
weighing evidence should have clearly seen that 
the fluctuations indicated were likely due to the 
unsteady motions of the vital forces in their con- 
test with the morbific elements. We are all 
fully convinced that our remedies do possess a 
degree of power over morbid conditions, and yet 
there is no denying that indubitable demonstra- 
tion of their curative action is not the facile theo- 
rem it is commonly supposed to be. 

Drugs Have Curative Values.— 

BUT IT IS UNDERSTOOD 
THAT WE ARE READY TO CONTEND THAT THERE IS A 
PREPONDERANCE OF EVIDENCE TO PROVE THAT DRUG 
REMEDIES DO POSSESS CURATIVE VIRTUES. 

Advocates of the "New Thought" movement 
err in conceding to medicine no virtues. There 
is no denying that the drug itself has little 



24 PRESENT STATUS OF MEDICINE 

curative power — perhaps none at all. My 
own theory is that the drug effects its purpose 
through the subtle action of suggestion upon the 
subconscious faculties (represented by the sym- 
pathetic nervous system). What I mean by 
this is that the drug, by virtue of selective affin- 
ity, irritates (stimulates, if you prefer the term) 
some particular nerve center, or even nerve ter- 
minal, through which a customary physiological 
action ordinarily passes, or in which it is usually 
excited, the artificial stimulus being accepted by 
the controlling power for the genuine, and the 
usual phenomena accordingly developed. 

There are examples of such action resulting 
from mechanical irritation, and there is good 
reason for believing that drugs act in an anal- 
agous manner. 

Valuable Methods 
Sometimes Rejected. 

The spirit of uncertainty and 
consequent discouragement that has crept into 
medicine as the result of repeated and conspic- 
uous failures has greatly weakened . its power. 
It is doubtless because of this that new methods 
have sprung up so numerously and are claiming 
so much public attention and patronage. 

It is all in accord with the evolutionary trend, 
and abundant good to humanity is bound to 
emerge from the confusion. 

But in this very place there stalks forth that 
which to the laity is a most astonishing anom- 
aly. Every one is craving new resources, and 
yet a suggestion tendered by one outside the 
brotherhood of science is not only rejected but 
spurned without investigation of its merits. 



TRUE SCIENCE. 25 



This, I say, to the popular mind, is an anomaly: 
to all it is irrational. 

True Science. 

The scientific man is he who has an 
intimate acquaintance with laws and principles. 
Science has been defined by Prof. Hyslop as "a 
body of truths or hypotheses which have pre- 
sented empirical credentials in their favor, and 
are to be modified by the same methods." 
Scientific investigation is an orderly and critical 
inquiry into observed phenomena. 

Few physicians enter the domain of pure 
science: they leave that field to him who can 
command his time and has a penchant for such 
study. Accordingly the physician is obliged to 
obtain his knowledge at second hand, accepting 
as final the conclusions of the pure scientist. 

When a practitioner of medicine is spoken of 
as a "scientific man," allusion is to one who 
has a good knowledge of truths, assumed or 
real, which have a direct bearing upon the pros- 
ecution of his life work. 

It therefore follows that a truly scientific phy- 
sician or surgeon must have an acquaintance with 
ascertained facts, classified knowledge and prev- 
alent hypotheses which have an appreciable 
bearing upon the work that falls to his hand. 
But the field of research is so broad, and the in- 
ferences derived by students of science so varied, 
that the man whose days are full of ministra- 
tions to those suffering from mental and physical 
ills can hardly find time to inform himself con- 
cerning even the essentials of successful and 
intelligent practice. 

In this truth lies the necessity for leaning on 



26 PRESENT STATUS OF MEDICINE. 

others for both data and inferences concerning 
many things of great practical value. 

In the pressure of numerous and tremendous 
demands it has been thought wise by investiga- 
tors to study phenomena mainly from the ma- 
terialistic point of view. It is only within the 
past decade or two that true scientific inquiry 
has been attempted, save by the few, in the 
realm of the immaterial. 

Yet all the time investigators have recognized 
the vast importance of phenomena about which 
little can be learned through an exclusive study 
of matter in its varied manifestations. 

Matter and Mind. 

Matter is known to be nothing 
more than matter, and, at best, but a medium of 
expression of a hidden Something. This un- 
known Something we find variously wrought and 
are lost in astonishment and admiration at its 
manifestations. 

In general, modern science has rested con- 
tented with what can be demonstrated to the 
five senses, and in practice has reckoned it the 
all. The vast unknown has been reckoned as 
unknowable, and men have been willing to leave 
it unexplored. Even hypotheses concerning it 
have been, by many, discouraged. 

The unity of all phenomena, however, has 
forced its way into our convictions. 

They are all ONE. "The power that mani- 
fests throughout the universe distinguished as 
material," says Spencer, "is the same power 
which in ourselves wells up under the form of 
consciousness. " 

Emerson says: 



DISEASE ORIGIN IN MIND. 27 



<4 It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly 
learns, that beyond the energy of his possessed and con- 
scious intellect he is capable of a new energy (as of an 
intellect doubled on itself), by abandonment to the 
nature of things; that besides his privacy of power as 
an individual man there is a great public power on 
which he can draw, by unlocking, at all hazards, his 
human doors and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and 
circulate through him; then he is caught up into the life 
of the universe, his speech is thunder, his thought is 
law, and his words are universally intelligible as the 
plants and the animals." 

The Origin of Disease in Mind. 

Into this great un- 
known it is only recently that the scientist has 
dared to enter. That he is following the foot- 
steps of the philosopher into a region of exact 
law and uniform phenomena is very clear. 
Many facts have already been collated and some 
of the controlling laws have been uncovered. 
But these new thoughts and discoveries stand in 
great need of classification and definition. Prog- 
ress is being made, hypotheses are forming, and 
exact experiments are developing truths. 

The opinion long held, and often set forth in 
precise terms by those whose intuitions were al- 
lowed to anticipate their reason, that the essen- 
tial etiology of disease lies in the psychic realm, 
is being accepted by scientific observers. 

There is not now a shadow of doubt that the 
origin of disease is in perverted mental concepts \ 
logical enough in form, but built on wrong pre- 
mises. These pernicious thoughts, however, are 
not necessarily of the conscious type. 

•' Introspective states," says Prof. Elmer Gates, in 
Monist, "affect metabolism, circulation, respiration, di- 
gestion, assimilation, excretion, secretion, growth, 



28 PRESENT STATUS OF MEDICINE. 

sleep, wakefulness, strength, health, hearing, seeing, 
tasting, smelling, temperature, the pressure senses, 
dreams, movements, complexion, voice, gesture and 
environment." 

A few months ago I had a patient of neurotic 
temperament whose heat centers, from emotion- 
al causes, became so overwrought that her tem- 
perature for several hours, on two consecutive 
days, promptly sent the mercury in my ther- 
mometer to the top of the tube, registering 
112° F. How much higher her temperature 
really was I am unable to say; but, from the 
rapidity with which the mercury mounted to the 
112° mark, I was led to believe that it would 
have gone much higher had the tube been longer. 
She was not relieved by drugs, freely given, but 
was quickly put into a normal state by means of 
suggestion. 

The evil effect on the physical organism of 
pernicious thought is admitted by every prac- 
titioner. He will some day learn that the good 
effect of wholesome thought is equally pro- 
nounced. 

The average man or woman is a prey to un- 
regulated and uneducated thought. Is it any 
wonder, then, that his body suffers from the 
fear, the anger, the malice, and the worry which 
his lack of discipline encourages and engen- 
ders? 

Inquiry Should Extend 
Into the Psychic Realm. 

Now what I want to ask is 
this: Why should we, as scientific physicians, al- 
low prejudice to debar us from therapeutic re- 
sources that are apt to prove far more effective, 



ADVANCED THOUGHT WINS SLOWLY. 29 

it may be, than any now at our command ? Why 
not enter and cultivate a field now running to 
weeds but capable of developing the richest 
fruits ? 

We should strenuously avoid the state of mind 
of the good Scotch woman, who, when charged 
with not being open to conviction, replied: "Not 
open to conviction? I scorn the imputation. 
But,"- she added, after a moment's hesitation, 
"show me the man who can convince me." 

We have but to add the psychic realm to the 
scope of our inquiry. There is no occasion, and 
there would be no rational excuse, for lessening 
in the slightest the ardor of our investigation in 
the realm of matter. Then why so circumscribe 
the breadth of our inquiry as to make con- 
clusions one-sided and incomplete? Why not 
scrutinize every set of phenomena and make our 
knowledge all-embracing ? Is it becoming to ig- 
nore phenomena, as clear and impressive as any, 
because the unscientific have ventured theories 
concerning them and have built fantastic beliefs 
upon them ? 

Advanced Thought Wins Its 
Way Slowly, but Surely. 

It is said that every ad- 
vanced thought of a revolutionary character goes 
through three stages. It is first spurned, then 
declared to be nothing new, and ultimately ac- 
cepted with the comment that it was always 
believed. 

Suggestive therapy has passed the first stage 
and is now merging from the second into the 
third. There are many physicians and surgeons 
of good standing who systematically utilize 



30 PRESENT STATUS OF MEDICINE. 



psychic forces in their practice; but when com- 
pared with the host of doctors who attend suf- 
fering humanity the world over, they are scarcely 
discernible. 

Why Are These Things So ? 

They are so because mental 
therapeutics has been for so long the real modus 
operandi of the vast army of charlatans, and the 
whole subject has thus acquired so bad a name 
that most men fear for their reputation if they 
touch it. But the time to claim what is rightly 
ours has arrived. 

The world wants men — large-hearted, manly men — 

Men who shall join in chorus and prolong 

The psalm of labor and of love. 

The age wants heroes — heroes who shall dare 

To struggle in the solid ranks of truth; 

To clutch the monster, Error, by the throat; 

To bear opinion to a loftier seat; 

To blot the error of oppression out, 

And lead a universal freedom in. 



II. 



The Present Status of Medicine 

(continued) 



(81) 






"The degree of vision that dwells in a man is the correct 
measure of a man."- Carlyle. 

" SEC. 6.— The physician should be a minister of hope and 
comfort to the sick, since life may be lengthened or 
shortened not only by the acts but by the words or manner 
of the physician, whose solemn duty is to avoid all utter- 
ances and actions having a tendency to discourage and de- 
press the patient."— Principles of Medical Ethics. 

"Yes, there is luck in this world; but nobody ever had it 
unless he reached for it ; unless he seized it, and with all 
his mind and all his might developed his opportunity 
when it came. There are plenty of apples on the trees, but 
it's only those fellows who make a spring and climb for 
them who get them."— Senator Depew inN. Y. Daily News. 



(32) 



CHAPTER II. 

THE PRESENT STATUS OF MEDICINE— Continued. 

The Demands of the Hour. 

The civilized world was 
supposed long since to be rid of slavery. But it is 
not. Mankind, in increasing numbers, are in the 
vilest serfdom. 

A woman of culture and refinement called at 
my office recently. She was dressed with taste 
and gave other evidences of favorable environ- 
ment; and yet I soon learned that she was as 
completely under the dominion of fear as ever 
was galley slave under the power of other men. 
Fear followed her wherever she went. More 
than once had she sought relief from her torment 
in visits to foreign lands; but in London, and 
Paris, and Berlin it haunted her still. The 
trouble was that by travel she could not escape 
herself. She had sought out many doctors and 
various means of treatment, without relief. In 
truth, some physicians had but bound her mis- 
conceptions more closely and had awakened new 
fears. Altogether she was a wretched woman. 

She is only one of the millions who swell the 
army of serfs in this and other countries and give 
the world much of its unrest. What the people 
need (every one of whom, did he but know it, is 
"to the manner born") is liberation from the 
shackles of real and fancied disease. There is 
an undertone of woe filling the whole world, and 
one has but to hearken to hear it. Suffering 

2 (33) 



34 PRESENT STATUS OF MEDICINE. 

enshrouds the earth, and the cry goes up to 
heaven, " Who shall deliver me from the body 
of this death?" 

Certain Advances. 

There is not the same prevalence 
of epidemic disease. A measure of relief has 
come. The decimating plagues of former days 
have lost their virulency. The pestilence no 
longer * 'walks in darkness and wastes at noon- 
day. " Its power is broken. Relief came through 
clean living and relative purity of surroundings. 
Making ' 'clean the outside of the platter" has 
done much, very much, for humanity; but the 
springs of thought are still fouled. 

Internal sanitation is of far more value than 
external. Cleanse the mind of its brood of noxi- 
ous thoughts, as well as the body of its harmful 
practices, and the world will become compara- 
tively free from its present load of ills. 

Prevention of Disease. 

Remember that disease is far 
more easily prevented than cured. I do not 
hesitate to affirm that the ailments which 
ordinarily follow an undeviating course to a fatal 
issue are nearly always preventable, and that the 
efficient prophylaxis lies in the direction of well- 
trained thought. 

The two cardinal essentials of success are ^1) 
the elimination of conscious fear and (2) the 
establishment of an absolute faith in the unity 
and goodness of all things. It is intended that 
these things be in addition to observance of the 
usual preventive measures. 

So long as we are in the flesh we must mind 



CHRONIC AILMENTS MORE PREVALENT. 35 

the things of the flesh. The subjective mind 
senses and the objective mind theorizes on the 
sensations. Accordingly, the former awaits its 
cue from the latter. 

Besides, it is evident that the same sensations 
do not produce the same objective phenomena. 
Action is given different directions by the differ- 
ing thoughts. When the subjective mind re- 
ports to the ego a certain sensation, in the ab- 
sence of specific directions the customary action 
follows. 

But the objective faculty is able at will to place 
an unusual interpretation upon the sensation, 
and, accordingly, vary the expression. 

It is also possible for the objective mind so to 
train the subjective faculties that sensations shall 
be altogether ignored and deprived of evil effect. 
This means that the organic functions can be 
measurably regulated through volition exercised 
by the conscious mind. 

The physician's duties are not merely to minis- 
ter to the sick. The obligation is laid upon him to 
teach people how to avoid mental and physical 
ills. In doing this he will be following a sacred 
vocation, and will forfeit neither ethical nor 
financial reward. 

Chronic Ailments More 
Prevalent Than Ever. 

Leaving out of account the 
contagious diseases which have been unquestion- 
ably reduced in prevalence and virulency as the 
result of scrupulous attention to sanitary meas- 
ures, the grand total of disease has not been 
reduced. 

The discouraging feature connected with the 



36 PRESENT STATUS OF MEDICINE. 

problem of prophylaxis lies in the operation of a 
counter psychic factor. Modern scientific re- 
search has brought into publicity a class of ex- 
perimenters wholly devoted to their work, enthu- 
siastic, able men in their particular lines, but 
largely men whose range of vision does not 
extend much beyond the horizon of their own 
special field. They are chiefly young men of 
the strenuous type, whose perceptions converge, 
so much of the time, wholly on their work that 
they fail to obtain a comprehensive view of the 
ultimate effect of their unguarded utterances. 

Another strenuous class, called journalists, 
made up of young men and women who are 
merely looking for things startling and outre, be- 
siege the laboratories for news, which in its 
immaturity, and with no particular safeguards, is 
precipitated upon the eager public mind. 

But this is not all. There are many surgeons, 
and fewer physicians, who avail themselves of 
new advertising methods offered by enterprising 
newspapers to proclaim half-truths and some- 
times mere chimeras of a disturbing nature to 
obtain notoriety and the emoluments that noto- 
riety brings. 

Disease Producers. 

To my mind the public herald- 
ing of disease-producing factors and operative 
procedures has a pernicious effect in the direc- 
tion of physical disorder induced by the morbid 
fears thereby engendered. 

The following, taken from a recent issue of 
the Chicago Tribune, has the early appearance 
of innocence, but to minds already full of fear 



DIAGNOSIS BUT NOT CURE. 37 

concerning disease and death it has great signif- 
icance and may carry untold harm : 
" « As a result of our work,' declare Prof. A. P. Mathews 
and B. R. Whitcher in the last issue of the American 
Journal of Physiology, ' we have become convinced of 
the probable truth of Meltzer's opinion concerning the 
importance of mechanical shock in the life history of 
the body and other cells. '" 

Prof. Mathews then raises the question as to 
how constant submission to shock by motormen, 
street-car conductors and factory employes may 
effect the length of life. 

11 The question thus raised is of considerable im- 
portance," writes Prof. Mathews. " For example, what 
effect has the constant vibration of flour mills on the 
length of life, the vital resistance and the physiological 
functions of mill operatives? How far will mechanical 
jarring account for the digestive and vasomotor 
disturbances many suffer in railway travel? Are the 
motormen or conductors of street railways influenced by 
the violent shocks to which they are constantly sub- 
jected?" 

The question here raised is one suited to dis- 
cussion in the journal where it originally ap- 
peared, but it ought never to have found its way 
into a public print. What is brought out is 
only a question, at best. Is not the public mind 
sufficiently alarmed over the possibilities of dis- 
ease without further harrowing ? 

Between the harrow of the germ theory, which 
still remains a theory, with the accompanying 
announcement of the multiplication of destroyers 
in the water we drink, the food we eat, and the 
air we breathe, and the other announcement of 
new diseases peculiar to the various avocations, 
humanity is having a hard time of it. 



38 PRESENT STATUS OF MEDICINE. 



Advanced Diagnosis, but 
Not Advanced Cure. 

Scientific study, confined as 
it has been almost wholly to an investigation 
of material phenomena from the standpoint of 
material cause, while it is doing valiant service 
by accumulating facts bearing on normal and 
abnormal organic phenomena of inestimable value 
as an aid to diagnosis, is accomplishing little of 
true therapeutic worth. 

It cannot be denied that the average duration 
of life has steadily increased during the past cen- 
tury; it is nevertheless clearly true that the im- 
provement is due mainly to three factors — (1) im- 
proved sanitation, (2) reduced medication, and (3) 
more intelligent nursing. 

Medicinal specifics have not been materially 
increased in either number or energy. New 
remedies have been multiplied, but their cura- 
tive values have not yet been certainly de- 
termined. 

The much-vaunted serum therapy appears to 
be losing its hold on professional confidence. 

Altogether, so little better is the physician of 
the twentieth century fitted to do successful 
battle with established disease, except as he may 
more intelligently avail himself of psychic aid, 
that the materialist's hope of physical salvation 
cannot be said to be any nearer realization. 






III. 



The Present Status of Medicine 

(continued) 



'It is not a question of the correctness or incorrectness of 
a physicians diagnosis; in his treatments, the healer 
must look deeper { never losing sight of the truth, that 
the realm of mind is the realm of cause, and the realm of 
matter the realm of effect ; that he must deal with causes 
and thus change effects."— M.Woodbury Sawyer. 



'Man awakens to consciousness to find himself played upon 
by impulses, tendencies and emotions. His mind is largely 
swayed by the demands of the body, and he in turn is 
swayed by his mind. Habit speaks stronger than the soul, 
and ideas master him until he learns to reason. And he 
must come to judgment within and know that he is a slave 
before he can learn how to become a master."— Dresser. 



(40) 



CHAPTER III. 

THE PRESENT STATUS OF MEDICINE— Continued. 

The Surgical Idea. 

Along surgical lines it must be 
seen that there have been startling improve- 
ments. The treatment of chronic diseases, es- 
pecially in gynecology, has been turned over, 
almost wholly, to surgery. 

A professor of diseases of women said to me 
not long ago: " Gynecology, which, of course, 
Doctor, we now understand to mean Gyneco- 
logical Surgery," etc. 

In truth it may be said that physicians in the 
large cities in their desperation have dropped 
their bottles and are now brandishing their 
knives. 

It may also be said that there is now scarcely 
an acute disease, outside those of a contagious 
nature, in which surgical intervention is not often 
called for by the standard indications. 

Not All Who Cut Are Surgeons. 

The result is that 
there has grown up a large body of surgeons, 
many of whom have been restricted in their ex- 
perience almost wholly to the practice of their 
specialty, and as a consequence are poorly qual- 
ified to render an intelligent opinion concerning 
the possibility of cure by other measures. 

These surgeons would not uniformly admit 
that a psychic element enters very prominently 

(41) 



42 PRESENT STATUS OF MEDICINE. 

into the development of their cures by surgery 
because they have been looking at events, so 
steadily from a materialistic standpoint; but I 
have become fully convinced that it does. 

Surgeons are commonly rated according to the 
deftness and skill with which they execute their 
work. When we see a well-performed operation 
we are constrained to say that the operator is an 
excellent surgeon. And so he may be; but we 
should not forget that manipulative skill can be ac- 
quired by any one who possesses a good degree 
of mechanical ingenuity. I have seen carpenters 
capable of doing the finest cabinet work whose 
opinion on the construction of a building would 
be rated very low. 

The true standing of a workman is determined 
by his character when placed beside those whose 
work has not only endured, but each part of 
which has borne a consistent relation to every 
other part. This means that we are to deter- 
mine the value of work by the mental breadth of 
the doer and by the ultimate results of his doing. 

Psychic Effect Determines Cure. 

The foregoing has 
been said as introductory to the proposition that, 
even in surgery, the psychic effect determines 
very largely the result of treatment. 

Effects are built upon the mental impressions 
received by the patient. Let one present him- 
self to the surgeon for his opinion. The latter 
examines him with care and evinces much diag- 
nostic skill. He looks seriously wise, and, after 
due thought, mildly advises an operation. He 
does not raise his patient's hope, nor does he, by 



PSYCHIC EFFECT DETERMINES CURE. 43 

either word or demeanor, express much con- 
fidence in the results of the operation. 

He operates. 

The patient is returned to his bed and placed 
in the care of a nurse whose demeanor is not cal- 
culated to raise one's hopes. When the surgeon 
reappears he wears the same troubled look, and, 
in reply to interrogatories, still shows, beneath 
his platitudes and attitudes, a disheartening un- 
certainty. 

Another patient presents himself to a surgeon 
of a widely different stamp. He may be neither 
as " scientific " nor as "experienced" as the 
other. The examination is not so exact, much 
being trusted to intuition ; but the air with which 
the whole thing is done proves very taking to the 
patient. The operation is not coldly recom- 
mended, but is warmly insisted upon. 

No time is to be lost in getting about it. 

The patient goes to the table with an air of 
hopeful expectancy. He is not surprised to find 
himself still on earth when he wakes, and soon 
begins to talk of health and strength. The 
nurse is cheerful and reassuring, for the sur- 
geon would tolerate no other. The surgeon is 
in and out with a smile and a word of pleasantry. 
There is sunshine in the air even though the 
shades be drawn. 

Which of these patients, think you, is more 
likely to make a good recovery ? I do not need 
to ask. 

If we deem it wise to operate at all, it is wise to 
look for good results and lead the patient to expect 
the same, no matter how grave the procedure. 

We are very apt to get what we cheerfully 
expect and to experience what we fear. 



44 PRESENT STATUS OF MEDICINE. 

One is not long in surgery before learning that 
results are often out of proportion to the import- 
ance of the work done. What I mean is that 
the operation of powerful psychic forces soon be- 
comes manifest. In one instance we see a 
patient, overburdened by life's cares and dis- 
tresses and discouragements, submit willingly to 
an operation of only moderate severity. The 
ordinary effect of the operation is not of a de- 
pressing character, and yet, to our consternation, 
the patient fails to rally from his depression or 
hastens to a demise. 

In another instance we find a patient in great 
distress of mind and body, presenting but few 
tangible symptoms and fewer still tissue changes. 
We do a minor operation, though there is little 
apparent demand for it. Mark the difference in 
results. The patient responds at once. He 
feels relieved. The fancied incubus has been 
removed and he becomes a well man. 

Cause of Differing Results. 

Now what is the meaning 
of all this ? We say one has no constitution — no 
reserve force; while the other is full of the re- 
active power which is the rightful heritage of hu- 
manity. But what is constitution if not the 
result chiefly of habits of thought, going back, it 
may be, deeply into ancestry ? What is physic- 
al resiliency if not the rebound which comes as the 
result of subconscious as well as conscious men- 
tal attitudes long maintained and energetically 
held. It is physical character resulting from a 
permanent effect produced on the subconscious 
activities. 

But why should a simple and seemingly un- 



too MUCH SURGERV. 45 

necessary operation afford a patient so great re- 
lief? Because a patient recovers his normal 
feelings promptly after removal of a few papilla 
from the rectum is no positive evidence that 
those papilla were the cause of his troubles. 
We should not too hastily infer that removal of 
offending parts in any case is the sole, or even 
the most distinct, factor in the recovery that 
ensues. 

The point that I seek to make, and one which 
cannot be recognized too early in ones practice, is 
that psychic forces are at work; and that, if we 
avail ourselves of their aid, the results of treat- 
ment are likely to be satisfying. 

Too Much Surgery. 

But now I want to postulate 
that there is incontinent haste in the adoption of 
surgical measures. The pendulum has swung 
too far. It would not matter so much were 
not the consequences often disastrous to both 
health and life. But life is now jeoparded on 
the slightest pretext ; and many lives are ruthless- 
ly sacrificed to avarice and ambition. 

Not long ago an eminent operator, in a paper 
presented to a State society, recommended a 
certain procedure of a major character as a cure 
for ailments presenting typical surgical aspects, 
and alluded to it as " almost without danger." 

In reply to a question concerning the mortality 
in his first hundred cases, which constituted the 
basis of his recommendations, he admitted a loss 
of six. 

To be sure six per cent, does not seem like a 
heavy loss when we are operating for grave sur- 
gical conditions; but in this instance the ailments 



46 PRESENT STATUS OF MEDICINE. 

were nearly all of a subjective type. If the mor- 
tality attending travel between New York and 
Chicago amounted to six in every hundred 
travel would certainly be interdicted by law, as it 
would be said to constitute wholesale butchery. 

This same operator, in a quiet conversation 
after the meeting, said to me : ' ' I don't suppose, 
Doctor Leavitt, that I value human life as highly 
as you do.'* 

Too Little Discrimination. 

The faults I have to find 
with modern surgery are (1) its prevalence and 
(2) its lack of sober discrimination between sim- 
ple and grave procedures. 

I insist that major surgery should be resorted 
to for only those ailments that assume grave 
characters and will not yield to milder measures. 
But the plea is that one might as well be dead as 
ill, and with this the surgeon justifies his as- 
sumption of the role of contingent executioner. 

With the author, surgery is a chosen line of 
work, and he would love to do more of it, but he 
cannot accede to jeopardy of life on any but the 
best pretexts. I hope this will not be taken to 
represent a Pharisaical spirit. I only mean to 
say that it is not fair to the confiding patient to 
subject him to risk of life for the relief of 
troubles that may be cured in some other way. 



IV 



The Present Status of Medicine 

(continued) 



(47) 



4 'When the Spartan eon complained that his sword was 
too short, his father said: 'Add a step to it, my son.'" 

—Leavitt. 

"If I were fishing in a trout hole, and failed for long to get 
trout, I would either get new bait or find a new hole" 

—Sam Jones. 

"It has been said that the world is full of fools who are 
trying to imitate other fools. Whatever you attempt, be 
yourself, think your own thoughts, and make up your mind 
that all you do in the world shall be your own— entirely 
your own." 



(48) 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE PRESENT STATUS OF MEDICINE— Continued. 

Ordinary Methods 
Too Perfunctory. 

Modern methods of medical prac- 
tice are not well calculated to obtain satisfactory 
results. They are of a character too routine and 
superficial. The physician in general practice 
makes his rounds among many patients, allowing 
but a few minutes to each, and is unable to give 
much serious thought to a particular case, no 
matter how desperate. He enters, hastily re- 
views the symptoms and after making a new pre- 
scription, suggested, it may be, by a trivial cir- 
cumstance or a temporary appearance, leaves the 
patient to battle with the disease, often handi- 
capped by the depressing effects of the wrongly 
chosen remedy itself. It were far better to make 
fewer and longer visits so that the true bent and 
tendency of the symptoms may be learned and 
that the patient may have time to obtain the 
salutary effect of the doctor's personality, which 
in the case of a true healer counts for much. 

The authorities have recently indicted a Men- 
tal Science healer for fraud because it was found 
that she had so many patients that there was not 
time in the twenty-four hours for each to receive 
an absent treatment from her. The busy prac- 
titioner of medicine might be almost as justly 
accused of fraud for pretending to give adequate 
attention to his large list of patients. 

(49) 



50 PRESENT STATUS OF MEDICINE. 

The methods of preserving and regaining 
health have not yet received due attention, 
though America has a hundred thousand phy- 
sicians. 

Are Physicians Underpaid? 

Those interested claim that 
the medical practitioner is underpaid for his serv- 
ices. Were his fees larger he could restrict the 
number of patients accepted and so give to each 
more acceptable and efficient service. 

To make a satisfactory visit one should be 
able to give variety to one's methods and so to 
arrange the interview that mental concentration 
could be given a better opportunity to produce 
its curative effects. The riveted attention of the 
patient cannot be secured in a moment, nor can 
the mind of the physician be at once set upon 
the case in hand. 

This, however, is not the place to pursue this 
topic further. It will be taken up in Part II. 

Service Wrought 
by Homeopathy. 

The man Hahnemann did a great 
service in showing not only the needlessness of 
the massive dosing and the free bloodletting of 
his day, but the positive harm that they were 
doing. Even those who are disposed to min- 
imize the effect of his teaching are willing to 
admit that the results of his practice were an im- 
provement on the results being obtained from 
the crude methods then in vogue. 

His was a process of refining and softening 
which marked an onward step in the evolution- 
ary movement and better prepared both the pro- 



PSYCHIC EFFECT OF HOMEOPATHY. 51 

fession and the laity for the still more subtle 
methods now coming in. The gross thought of 
the time could not tolerate the refinement of 
therapeutics that he proposed. It was spurned 
and Hahnemann himself was subjected to indig- 
nity. Because of persecution he was obliged to 
forsake his home city, which, be it added, has 
since publicly acknowledged itself greatly hon- 
ored by his former citizenship. 

Psychic Effect of Homeo- 
pathic Treatment. 

Though educated in a 
homeopathic school and still holding the law of 
similia similibus curantur as a valuable thera- 
peutic discovery, I am not ready to contend that 
homeopathic remedies per se possess the won- 
derful curative powers by many enthusiasts at- 
tributed to them. Much of the advantage shown 
by the practitioners of those early days over the 
votaries of the dominant school was fairly at- 
tributable (1) to the harmless dosage and (2) to 
psychic impression. Hahnemann himself was 
astonished at the apparent efficacy of his atten- 
uated remedies and, philosopher that he was, 
was led to attribute to them an occult — a 
" spiritual" — power which he believed to be de- 
veloped by his processes of trituration and suc- 
cussion. 

It may be asked why the homeopathic meth- 
ods should carry with them peculiar psychic en- 
ergy. The reason should be evident to every 
one familiar with the theory of suggestive thera- 
peutics. 

There was, first, their newness and novelty to 
attract and hold attention. A large part of the 



52 PRESENT STATUS OF MEDICINE. 

therapeutist's work is done when he is able to 
rivet his patient's attention. 

There was, secondly, the mystery in which the 
curative phenomena were enshrouded, which to 
the prevailing superstition of the times partook 
of the mystery of the infinite. 

There were also the peculiar methods of clin- 
ical inquiry, full of detail, with a record of each 
symptom, to still further impress. 

There was the announcement, after careful 
study, of the alleged similimum of the case to 
give assurance. 

And, finally, there was the unwavering faith of 
those early disciples of Hahnemann in the 
efficiency of their remedies to complete the con- 
viction and fully establish the conditions of psy- 
chic cure. 

And now I may be allowed to add what may 
be extremely distasteful to many of my con- 
freres, that the reason why homeopathic cures are 
not now so numerous or startling in the practice 
of individual physicians of the homeopathic school 
is found in the elimination of the machinery for 
psychic impression^ the several parts of which 1 
have just listed. 

Revulsion from Old The- 
ories Concerning: Matter. 

There is no doubt that 
the revulsion taking place from the old theories 
concerning matter is having its effect on medical 
opinions. Atoms were formerly supposed to be 
the smallest particles into which matter could be 
divided. Matter itself was held to be an entity. 
We have been told by scientists that the atoms 
representing the constituents of matter are 



REVULSION FROM OLD METHODS. 53 

nothing but vortex rings of ether. At last it has 
been found that even atoms are divisible into 
still smaller units, each of those of the new sub- 
stance, radium, containing 150,000 of them, 
with each unit, or ion, rotating at tremendous 
speed. It is said that 11,200 of such ions in 
each atom would produce oxygen and 137,000 of 
them gold. 

Prof. Crooks says "that not only are the 
atoms apparently going to pieces, but the 
masses of molecules probably dissolve themselves 
into the ether waves which fill the universe or 
into electrical energy. Thus we stand on the 
border line where matter and force pass into each 
other/* 

Thus the material and the spiritual have so 
changed our concepts of the cosmos and its 
forces that we are prepared to accept the con- 
stituent unity of all things. The power that 
causes the protoplasmic cell to develop into the 
human form is the same power that enables us to 
realize our existence. The energy seen in the 
majesty of a tornado is the same that exhales in 
the perfume of the flower and that gives to all 
pleasure its zest. 

The true etiology of disease will be found to 
lie in the subtle and insidious action of unseen 
forces, operating upon the subconscious nature; 
and the efficient cure will be recognized, not so 
much in the remedy that acts according to the 
laws of physics as that which reaches deeper, 
having its tap root in the metaphysical sphere. 

Hitherto we have been dealing with secondary 
causes. We shall now be led to recognize and 
consider first causes. 



54 PRESENT STATUS OF MEDICINE. 



Unity of All Things. 

Emerson foreshadowed a truth 
which is becoming recognized, the effect of 
which on medicine is bound to be tremendous. 
I quote: 

"There is one mind common to all individual men. 
Every, man is an inlet to the same and to all of the 
same. What Plato thought, he may think; what a 
saint has felt, he may feel; who hath access to the Uni- 
versal Mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for 
this is the only sovereign agent. Of this Universal 
Mind each individual is one or more incarnation." 






V 



New Methods 



(55) 






"Not at all times is everything equally ripe for inquiry. 
There is a phase, or it may be a fashion, even in science. 
I spoke of geographical exploration as the feature of 
Elizabeth's time. Astronomical inquiry succeeded it. 
Optics and Chemistry were the dominating sciences of 
the early part of the nineteenth century, Heat and Geol- 
ogy of the middle. Electricity and Biology of the latter 
portion. Not yet has our branch of Psychology had its 
phase of popularity ; nor am I anxious that it should be 
universally fashionable. It is a subject of special interest 
and therefore perhaps of special danger. In that respect 
it is like other studies of the operations of mind, like a 
scientific enumeration of the phenomena of religion, for 
instance, like the study of anything which in its early 
stages looks mysterious and incomprehensible. Training 
and some admixture of other studies are necessary for its 
healthy investigation. The day will come when the science 
will put off its foggy aspect, bewildering to the novice, and 
become easier for the less well-balanced and more ordi- 
narily-equipped explorer. _ At present it is like a mountain 
shrouded in mist whose sides offer but little secure foot- 
hold, where climbing, though possible, is difficult and 
dangerous."— Sir Oliver Lodge. 

'Old beliefs, while they have a right to good standing, have 
no right to exemption from investigation. Nor have they 
a right to deny the value of new concepts without ad- 
equate inquiry and experiment."— Leavitt. 






(58) 



CHAPTER V. 

NEW METHODS. 

Upward and Onward Trend. 

The trend of events is 
continually onwards. Every experience that 
comes into an individual life should be looked 
upon as the bearer of some message to that in- 
dividual soul. It is a harbinger of peace. Like- 
wise every event is but a link in the chain of di- 
vine purpose that binds humanity to higher 
ideals and more elaborate unfoldment. 

The course is onward, ever onward. 

Look at the marvelous discoveries being made 
in physics and the equally wonderful adaptation 
of forces to the accomplishment of the world's 
work. Notice also, if you will, that man is con- 
tinually moving into what was once regarded as 
the terra incognita y the vast undiscovered, the 
deeply mysterious phenomena of nature which at 
one time, to the undeveloped mind, appeared to 
be the very mantle of Deity, 

Movement Too Slow. 

As already pointed out, there 
has been an equal advance toward an appreci- 
ation of the meaning of phenomena pertaining to 
medical science and a moderate utilization of such 
knowledge by therapeutics. But, somehow, reg- 
ular medicine appears to have been slower to 
avail itself of the discoveries and adaptations 
made in collateral sciences than it should have 

(57) 



58 SOME NEW METHODS. 

been. Wrapped in its robes of pride and self- 
sufficiency it has said, in effect, if not in precise 
terms : ' ' I ask no extrinsic aid. I can differen- 
tiate and prognosticate even if I cannot cure." 
And meanwhile people have been dying who 
might have been saved and a wail of woe has 
risen to the ears of Heaven. 

I quote from an editorial which appeared in a 
popular and well-conducted medical journal of 
the dominant school a few months ago: 
"Herbert Spencer says that 'Life is adjustment, and 
as is the degree of life so is the degree of adjustment.' 
We cease to live as soon as we cease to be able to ad- 
just ourselves to the destructive forces that constantly 
surround us. The physician's function is to direct the 
internal adjustment of the body so as to overcome, or 
pass safely, dangers to life that occur in the course of 
disease. Disease is a battle between the living cells of 
the body and various destructive agencies. The want 
of adjustment may mean the death of the patient. On 
the doctor's skill and knowledge often depends the issue 
of life or death. It is a most agonizing sight to see 
people of all ages and stations in life die around us in 
multitudes every day and no one able to save them. 
If we could only assist the body to make the proper degree of 
adjustment, all these precious lives might be saved. All 
so-called incurable diseases are only so because human 
knowledge has not advanced far enough to see how to 
make the proper adjustment. Every death of child or 
adult that occurs from disease, where the usual lines of treat- 
ment have been pursued, is evidence of the woeful ignorance 
of our age. If enough were known to be able to make 
the oroper adjustment at the proper time such deaths 
could not occur. When the doctor sits helplessly by 
and day by day sees the life of his patient steadily 
losing its grip upon the various functions of the body, 
knowing full well that it is only the matter of a few days 
or a few hours when all will be over, how often will he 
ponder as to whom to blame for the condition of impo- 
tence in which he finds himself? The ignorant masses 
blame him whenever such scenes occur. The more in- 



INCENTIVE TO ADOPT NEW METHODS. 59 

telligent, feeling that he has done his best, exonerate 
him from all blame and seldom ask themselves whether 
or not blame should be attached somewhere." 

The possibilities of cure are undoubtedly 
great. But the physician and the scientist find 
the door of achievement wide open before them 
and the wail of humanity bids them enter. Old 
methods have certainly shown themselves to be 
inadequate. Then why not, in the name of all 
that is good, tack to them, or substitute for them, 
other methods which bear the credentials of 
reason and experience, and make tentative use of 
them? 

Abundant Incentives to Study 
and Adopt New Methods. 

"If we could only assist 
the body to make the proper degree of adjust- 
ment all these precious lives might be saved," 
very truthfully says our editor. Not only could 
disease thus be cured, but thus, pre-eminently, 
could disease be prevented. 

One disease prevented is worth ten cured. 

The great English barrister, Erskine, at an 
early stage of his splendid career, struggling 
with poverty but cherishing a towering ambition, 
took a most audacious stand before the court in 
the trial of an important case in which he was en- 
gaged as a mere assistant, outranking his associ- 
ates in the force and ardor of his plea and win- 
ning in the face of stout opposition. On being 
subsequently questioned by a friend as to the 
tremendous incentive that must have been behind 
his action he declared that he felt the clutch of 
his children's hands at the tails of his coat as 
he plead, and heard their piteous cry for bread. 



60 SOME NEW METHODS. 

A similar incentive should move the physician 
to provide the means of relief for suffering hu- 
manity. He cannot afford to stand complacent- 
ly on his dignity, saying to those who point out 
possible aid: 

* 'I do not like its source and I do not believe 
the testimony concerning its virtues." 

Let him make a systematic investigation and a 
test of the claims, for only in this way can the 
value of a method be determined. 

Principles of the New Methods, 

The new methods in- 
volve certain principles that may be expressed in 
the propositions which follow. 

First: That man is endowed with a dual 
mind, termed objective and subjective, conscious 
and unconscious (or subconscious). 

Second: That the objective mind is under 
control of the volition and gives conscious di- 
rection to human energies. 

Third: That the subjective mind has control 
of the organic functions, regulates the vital 
action, is the storehouse of energy, has compre- 
hensive and accurate memory, is the repository of 
all habits and of automatic action in general. It 
is understood also to possess powers peculiar to 
itself, such as thought-transferrence and clair- 
voyance and is supposed to be the side of mind 
which lies open toward the Universal or Infinite. 

Fourth: That the subjective mind is amen- 
able to instruction and direction by the objective 
mind, not only of the subject but of others. 
This effect is supposed to be wrought through 
the power of conscious will. The method of 
conveying the impression is commonly termed 



PRINCIPLES OF NEW METHODS. 61 

suggestion. When applied to self it is auto- 
suggestion. Suggestion is given through (1) one 
or more of the five senses or through (2) the 
mere power of concentrated thought. Distance 
is supposed to be no bar to thought suggestion. 

Fifth: That the subjective mind, not being 
able to carry on inductive reasoning, but being 
capable of superb deductive action, is peculiarly 
susceptible to impressions, and by proper man- 
agement can be made an obedient servant. 

Sixth: That all disease has its origin in the 
mind, the subjective taking its cue from its en- 
vironment, from the fears, the constitutional 
bent, the impressions received from other minds, 
misinterpreted sensations, etc. 

Seventh : That prevention of disease consists 
in keeping the subjective mind under the power 
of wholesome suggestion; and that the cure of 
disease consists in the use of suggestions running 
counter to disease and the establishment of sub- 
conscious thoughts of health, inculcated by 
conscious volition. 

These are the basic principles of all methods of 
psychic cure, though not always acknowledged 
or understood by those who practice them. The 
systematic adaptation of them to medical prac- 
tice is what I hope herein to accomplish. 



* You can no more filter your mind into purity than yon 
can compress it into calmness ; you must keep it pure if 
you would have it pure, and throw no stone into it if you 
would have it quiet."— RusMn. 



(62) 



VI. 



New Methods in Detail 



(63) 



'If any scientific soc'ety is worthy of encouragement and 
support it should surely be this. If there is any object 
worthy the patient and continued attention of humanity, 
it is surely these great and pressing problems of whence, 
what and whither, that have occupied the attention of 
Prophet and Philosopher since time was. The discovery 
of a new star, or of a marking on Mars, or of a new element, 
or of a new extinct animal or plant, is interesting: surely 
the discovery of a new human faculty is interesting, too. 
Already the discovery of l telepathy ' constitutes the first- 
fruits of this society's work, and it has laid the way open 
to the discovery of much more. Its aim is nothing less 
than the investigation and better comprehension of human 
faculty, human personality and human destiny."— Sir 
Oliver Lodge, Pres. of the Psychic Research Society. Pres- 
idential address Jan. 30th last. 

'The evidence that the brain cortex regulates absorption, 
secretion, vascular tension and the anabolic and katabolic 
process in the cells of the tissues may now be regarded as 
complete. Sores in many melancholies will not heal. 
Gland and lung tissue in idiots and dements are unable to 
resist the attacks of the tubercle bacillus, so that two- 
thirds of our idiots and one-third of our dements die of tu- 
bercular diseases."— Prof. Clouston. 

'A great many so-called illnesses are probably the result of 
boredom— that is, lack of some mental stimulus sufficiently 
strong to overcome the frequent disquieting symptoms to 
which humanity is heir and which undoubtedly can often 
be converted into bona fide ailments by mental suggestion. 
This is certainly true of three-fourths of my lady's indispo- 
sitions, which disappear as if by magic under the skillful 
and tactful physician who combines a knowledge of the 
world with the skill of an iEsculaoius."— JST. Y. Tribune. 



(64) 



CHAPTER VI. 

NEW METHODS IN DETAIL. 

Duality of Mind. 

In claiming for man a dual mind it 
matters little whether the duality be regarded in 
the sense of separate minds or merely as sepa- 
rate departments or phases of mind. So far as 
the brain and nervous system are concerned it is 
not assumed, by any one competent to hold an 
opinion, that there is an exact division, though 
it appears to be probable that the cerebrum is 
the particular part of the brain which has most 
to do with conscious life and thought. That 
conscious action utilizes every part of the brain 
and nervous system is quite probable. I sup- 
pose it may be justly added that consciousness 
itself is in a measure dependent on the integrity 
of certain parts usually regarded as belonging to 
the unconscious. 

" Certain mental feelings seem connected with differ- 
ent parts of the body — love with the heart and melan- 
choly with the liver, while to arrive at the highest 
point of mental insight there has always been a ten- 
dency to direct the thoughts to the pit of the stomach, 
or just above the navel; here lies the great solar plexus, 
the chief center of the sympathetic system. Many 
feelings are connected with this region, and we speak of 
a sickening story, sickening thoughts, etc. The Bible 
speaks of 'bowels of mercies,' 'straitened in your 
own bowels,' etc." — Schofield. 

The new methods, it will be understood, re- 
ject the suggestion offered by some, that mind 

3 (65) 



66 



NEW METHODS IN DETAIL. 



can be interpreted in terms of matter. The 
brain and nervous systems are regarded as 
media merely, mind itself being independent, 
and human mind but "an inlet" of the Univer- 
sal Mind. 

CO/VSC/OC/J/V£SS 




Figure 1. A Schematic Representation of the Dual Mind. 

In this view I do not need to say they are 
sustained by the best authorities. 
" Here, indeed, we arrive at a barrier," remarks Herbert 
Spencer, "which needs to be perpetually pointed out 
alike to those who seek materialistic explanations of 
mental phenomena and to those who are alarmed lest 
such explanations may be found. The last class prove 
by their fears almost as much as the first prove by 
their hope, that they believe that mind may possibly be 
interpreted in terms of matter, whereas 
there is not the remotest possibility of so interpreting it. 
For the concept we form of matter is but the symbol of 
some form of power absolutely and forever unknown to 
us. Mind is also unknowable, and the simplest form 
under which we can think of its substance is but a sym- 
bol of something that can never be rendered into 
thought. Nevertheless, we are compelled to choose be- 
tween translating mental phenomena into physical phe- 
nomena or of translating physical phenomena into men- 
tal phenomena — the latter alternative would seem the 
more acceptable." 

Relations of Cerebral Structures 
to the Two Phases of Mind. 

A word more con- 
cerning the brain structure in its relation to con- 
scious and unconscious mentation, and then we 



NERVOUS STRUCTURES. 67 

shall turn to other interesting features of the 
subject. 

"The cortex is the seat of conscious sensation, though 
we are by no means conscious of all that takes place 
even in the cortex; for innumerable sensations may, and 
probably do, continually reach it, of which we are 
wholly or partially unconscious; in many cases, of course, 
this is accounted for by non-attention. On the other 
hand, it would appear from recent researches that it is 
not possible to be conscious of any currents that do 
not reach the surface of the brain." 

It is unnecessary for me to add that duality of 
mind is by no means a new theory ; on the con- 
trary, it formed an essential feature of certain 
ancient philosophies. 

Anatomy and Physiology 
of the Nervous Structures. 

Without purposing to en- 
ter into a minute account of the physical struct- 
ures I want merely to call attention to the rec- 
ognized fact that every superior being is made 
up of an aggregation of cytods and cells. In 
the various organs these minute structures are 
associated in purpose and endeavor to carry on 
a certain definite work, and it is true that their 
co-operation for a specific purpose is marvelous- 
ly intelligent and efficient. The cytod is an 
atom of simple plasson. The cell proper has 
been differentiated into nucleus and proto- 
plasm. These cells have become differentiated 
with special reference to the purpose or motif 
for which they have been placed in the organism 
and their various and associated duties have 
been clearly and definitely assigned. 

What strikes the student of physiology and 
psychology with peculiar force is the phenomena 



68 NEW METHODS IN DETAIL. 

associated with the action of both the individual 
cells and the several groupings of them in par- 
ticular organs, which indicate true intelligence. 
Each cell has its peculiar part to perform, and, 
in the line of its duty, manifests not only power 
of choice, but also memory and wonderful 
adaptation of means to the accomplishment of 
purpose. 

It is these phenomena characterizing cell life 
that lead biologists to regard individual cells as 
distinct organisms. Quite in consonance, then, 
with the views of evolution now held, a higher an- 
imal may be regarded as truly a colony, or, better 
still, a confederacy of protozoans (single-celled 
organisms). ' 'Every one of the cells composing 
such an animal has retained its primitive prop- 
erties, giving them a higher degree of perfec- 
tion by division of labor and by selection. " — Binet 

In the associations of cells constituting organs, 
where there is a common motif manifested and 
an intelligent co-operation to accomplish an end, 
there are indications of a ruling intelligence, or 
central power, which presides over the organiza- 
tion and is responsible for co-ordinate action. 

These phenomena have drawn from Haeckel 
the suggestion that each organ should be re- 
garded as an individual (Techlology). The sev- 
eral organs, taken together, may then well be 
looked upon as a confederacy under a central 
control, constituting an individual ego in mani- 
festation. 

Various Designations 
of Central Intelligence. 

Scientists may differ as to 
the proper terminology by which the central in- 



MEANS OF COMMUNICATION. 69 

telligence should be designated; but no one de- 
nies its existence or its power to control its mill- 
ions of subordinates. Thus it has been called 
the ' ' subjective mind, " the ' 'subconscious mind, " 
the "unconscious mind," the "secondary 
self," the "subliminal consciousness," the "com- 
munal soul," the "secondary personality," etc., 
the various terms employed being determined 
largely by the point of view from which the sub- 
ject is treated. 

" Philosophers may differ in opinion as to its origin 
and its ultimate destiny; and biologists may not be agreed 
as to just what it is — that is to say, whether it is the 
sum of all the intelligences of which the body is com- 
posed or whether it is an independent entity capable of 
surviving the dissolution of the confederacy which it 
controls. 

" It is, however, a work of superrogation to dwell upon 
the obvious fact that a confederation of intelligences, 
organized for a specific purpose, must act in subordi- 
nation to some central power or authority. Such a 
power is as much a biological necessity as an executive 
officer is a political necessity to a state or nation." 

Means of Communication 
Between the Several Parts. 

I have finally to call at- 
tention to the means of communication between 
the several parts of the systems thus organ- 
ized in order to complete this glance at what 
constitutes the framework upon which the 
claims of the new methods of cure are based. 

First of all we should remember the pos- 
sibility, elsewhere mentioned, of communication 
in an effective way not only between detached 
minds — more especially between subjective and 
subjective — but also between the great central 
mind and the lesser minds of the body, through 



70 NEW METHODS IN DETAIL. 

the universal ether (i. e., independently of the 
nervous system). But at present this possibility 
stands, in the minds of most people, as a mere 
hypotheses, as stood wireless telegraphy a dec- 
ade ago. 

How far the ordinary cells, as well as the cells 
differentiated for specific purposes other than 
mere transmission of stimuli, are capable of act- 
ing in a vicarious manner in emergencies is not 
yet known. 

Of course the nerves are the chief, and the 
most facile, media of communication, and it is by 
virtue of the facilities for communication thus 
afforded that the several parts of the body are 
kept in co-ordination. 

As to the precise mode of action involved in 
the production of the phenomena of thought 
transmission from one part of the system to an- 
other we have little more than theory to offer, 
though the hypothesis put forth appeals very 
strongly to reason. A glance at this and then 
we shall proceed with the more definite purpose 
of our study. 

In their study of brain anatomy during the 
last decade scientists have arrived at a solution 




Figure 2. Pyramidal Nerve Cells Found Chiefly in the Brain.— McKendricH 



NERVOUS STRUCTURES. 



71 



of many mental phenomena which before had 
greatly puzzled them. The essay of Prof. 
Raymon y Cajal of Spain, which was awarded 
the prize of the International Medical Congress 
a few years ago, is among the most important 
contributions to our knowledge of brain anatomy 
and physiology. Prof. Cajal showed that the 
principal elements in brain tissue are nerve cells, 
and that each cell is a distinct entity. Its 
branches, or filaments, form temporary con- 




Figuee 3. From a piece of Spinal Cord. A and B, ganglion cells ; D, axis 
cylinder ; p, protoplasmic process ; c, neuroglia cells.— Ranvier from E dinger, 
dm, Ed, 



72 NEW METHODS IN DETAIL. 

nections with contiguous cells, and in this way 
a continuous circuit is provided. The con- 
struction and mechanism are the same through- 
out brain and nerve tissue. Waldeyer calls 
these cells ' 'neurons," and his theory of nerve 
anatomy and physiology has been generally 
adopted. 

Cajal also mentions certain cells which lie be- 
tween the neurons, and which, under the action 
of volition, so change their form as to act as in- 
hibitors of nerve impulses. 

IN THE LIGHT OF THIS NEURON THEORY OF THE 
NERVOUS SYSTEM WE HAVE THE COMPLETION OF A 
MOST SATISFACTORY BASIS FOR THE PSYCHOLOGICAL 
SYSTEM OF CURE TO WHICH THIS WORK IS INTENDED 
TO CALL ATTENTION. 

Cardinal Features 
of the Brain. 

For my present purpose be 
it said it is unnecessary for me to do more than 
allude to the cardinal features of the brain, 
spinal cord and the lesser ganglia, which con- 
stitute the essentials of the great nervous system. 
This I shall do as expeditiously as is consistent 
with my purpose. 

Mental facts cannot be properly studied apart 
from the physical environment of which they 
take cognizance. And yet we are to remember 
as we study the physical that the conviction is 
general, even among the most materialistic, that 
mental life is essentially teleological. 

Says Prof. James: "The brain is a sort of 
pons asinorum in anatomy until one gets a cer- 
tain general conception of it as a clew. Then 
it becomes a comparatively simple affair/' 



CARDINAL FEATURES OF THE BRAIN. 73 

In the development of all the higher verte- 
brates, the cerebro-spinal axis is formed by a 
hollow tube containing fluid and terminated in 
front by an enlargement, separated by trans- 
verse constrictions into three cerebral vesicles. 

The middle vesicle in the process of develop- 
ment changes least of all. The upper walls 
thicken into the corpora quadri gemina\ its lower 
walls become the crura; and its cavity is con- 
verted into the Aqueduct of Silvius. 

Changes in the other vesicles are more pro- 
nounced. The walls of the posterior vesicle 
thicken to form the cerebellum above the pons 
varolii below, while still below that they form 
the medulla oblongata. From the anterior 
vesicle are formed the optic thalami and the 
cerebral hemispheres. The convolutions are 
formed from the walls of the vesicle in such a 
way that the convoluted surface finally comes to 
enfold and cover the entire cerebrum. Connec- 
tion between the two hemispheres is formed 
chiefly by means of the optic thalami and the 
transverse fibers at the corpus callosum. Just in 
front of the last-named body lies the corpus 
striatum. 

The surface of the convolutions is covered 
with gray matter which is termed cortex. The 
cortex has been called by Meynert the surface of 
projection for every muscle and every sensitive 
point of the body. The muscles and the sensi- 
tive points are represented each by a cortical 
point, and the brain is little more than the sum 
of all these cortical points, to which, on the mental 
side, as many sensations and ideas correspond. 
"The sensations and ideas of sensation and of 



74 NEW METHODS IN DETAIL. 



motion are, in turn, the elements out of which 
the mind is built.' ' 

Physiologists have established beyond question 
that the central convolutions, on either side of 




Figure 4. The Primary "Cerebral Vesicles." 

the Fissure of Rolando, are the region from 
which all the motor incitations which leave the 
cortex pass out. This may be called the ' 'motor 
zone." 

"The highest centers probably contain nothing but 
arrangements for representing impressions and move- 
ments and other arrangements for coupling the 
activity of these arrangements together. Currents 
pouring in from the sense organs first excite some ar- 
rangements, which in turn excite others, until at last a 
discharge downwards of some sort occurs. When this 
is once grasped there remains little ground for asking 
whether the motor zone is exclusively motor, or sensa- 
tion as well."— James, 

It is a mere glance, but what has been given 
concerning the brain will probably suffice for the 
purposes of this work. 

Cardinal Features of 
the Nervous System, 

The nervous system in all 
vertebrated animals consists of two distinct por- 
tions — viz. : the cerebrospinal and the sympathetic 
or ganglionic. 






FEATURES OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. *T5 

The cerebro-spinal system includes the brain 
and spinal cord and the cranial and spinal 
nerves. 

The sympathetic system consists of a chain of 
ganglia connected by nervous cords, extending 
from the cranium to the pelvis, along each side 
of the vertebral column, and from which nerves 
with large ganglionic masses proceed to the 
viscera and blood-vessels in the cavity of the 
chest, abdomen and pelvis. It has been called 
the nervous system of organic life, since it regu- 
lates, under the power of unconscious will, the 
due performance of the functions of organic life. 

The only sympathetic nerve that I shall men- 
tion, and the most important, is the great 
sphlanchnic. It arises from the fifth, sixth, 
seventh, eighth and ninth thoracic ganglia, the 
roots forming a large round cord passing down- 
wards and forwards, piercing the diaphragm 
and ending in the semilunar ganglion. The 
semilunar ganglia, with the nerves entering and 
emerging from them, combine to form the solar 
plexus, which, because of the mass of nervous 
matter that it embraces, has been called the 
abdominal brain. 

The nervous matter of various parts, like that 
of the brain, takes on two distinct forms, the vesi- 
cular and the fibrous. The vesicular matter is 
gray in color and granular in texture, is well 
supplied with blood and contains nucleated nerve 
cells. This gray matter is immediately asso- 
ciated with nervous action and is the seat in 
which the force manifested in nervous action 
originates. It is found only in the nervous 
centers. In the brain it lies on the surface of 
the convolutions; but in the spinal cord it lies 



76 NEW METHODS IN DETAIL. 

upon the inside, being covered by fibrous matter. 
In the ganglia the gray matter and the fibrous 
matter are more or less uniformly associated. 

It will be remembered that the impulses which 
the nerves of the body are fitted to convey may 
be either afferent or efferent: that is to say, they 
may be excited by stimulating the terminals or 
may be generated within the larger centers. 

Physiological Functions 
of Cerebral Center. 

In assuming the existence of 
a dual mind, it is presumed that the objective 
mind has charge of all the voluntary movements, 
while to the subjective are given over all involun- 
tary action, including the organic functions. 

Concerning this division there will be no ob- 
jection by any one, even the most materialistic. 
But the objection will be raised by many in ac- 
crediting to either mind certain alleged occult 
powers, such as thought-transferrence and clair- 
voyance. 

I shall not at this time take up a discussion of 
telepathy, though it be a subject which lies very 
near the heart of every believer in psychic heal- 
ing, whether he be christian scientist or a mere 
believer in psycho-therapeutics. The subject is 
discussed at some length in the chapters on 
"Telepathy" and "The Question of Absent 
Treatment.' ' 

Clairvoyance is a topic entirely foreign to our 
present purpose and will not be touched upon. 

That the subjective mind, or at any rate the 
subconscious phase of mind, is the side of us 
open toward the Universal, not many will feel 
disposed to question. 



CONTROL OF SUBJECTIVE ACTION. 77 

Objective Control of 
Subjective Action. 

Few are inclined to doubt the 
control over the human organism exercised by 
the subjective mind, while, on the other hand, 
relatively few are prepared to admit that the 
subjective mind is amenable to direction and 
education. Indeed, it is commonly believed 
that man has little or no control over the so- 
called involuntary muscles and the organic func- 
tions. It is just here that the battle must be 
fought, for upon the hypothesis of pronounced 
amenability of the subconscious mind to the con- 
scious will, rests the foundation of the new 
methods. 

According to Prof. Schmidt the unconscious 
mind is exemplified in plants. To some the 
thought that plants possess mind may be start- 
ling, and yet a study of cell life appears to dem- 
onstrate that they do. They furnish conspicuous 
evidences of real intelligence. A single example 
may not be superfluous. In plants with large 
and broad leaves, as in the instance of the rub- 
ber plant, too rapid and extensive evaporation is 
prevented by a glaze given the leaf which pre- 
vents free exit of moisture. It may be said that 
this is a mere natural adaptation of means to 
ends and does not indicate a localization of mind 
in the organism itself. The contention is not 
that the action indicates conscious action any 
more than does the free opening of sweat ducts 
in the human organism on a hot day. It is 
evident, however, that the restriction of perspira- 
tion in the one and the promotion of it in the 
other are phenomena originating in the subcon- 
sciousness of each and that they do represent 



78 NEW METHODS IN DETAIL. 

intelligence. In very dry climates the large 
leaves escape the withering effect of the sun by 
turning their edges to its rays. In either in- 
stance the drying effect produced by rapid ab- 
straction of moisture would probably be fatal. 

That plants are susceptible to suggestion is 
evidenced by the satisfactory response they give 
to the care bestowed by one who loves them. 
It has become axiomatic that the lover of plants 
succeeds far better with them than do those who 
give them equal attention under the impulse of 
mere duty. It would appear that the fig tree 
really felt so powerfully the curse pronounced 
upon it by Jesus, because of its sterility, that it 
immediately withered. 

Certain flowers fold their petals just as 
promptly at midday as at evening, if enshrouded 
in darkness; and on restoration of the light they 
open again. The horticulturist and the flori- 
culturist have learned various methods of 
plant deception by means of which they are able 
to influence the development of the organisms in 
which they are interested. 

You have but to consult experienced men in 
this line to learn many wonderful things clearly 
evidencing the power of suggestion over plant 
life. 

I quote from an excellent article that recently 
came under my notice: 

" The forcing process is assisted by a peculiar and in- 
genious method, the lilac plants being put under the in- 
fluence of an anaesthetic to make them bloom more 
quickly. For this purpose they are placed in an airtight 
wooden box, with an uncorked bottle of ether and are 
exposed to the fumes of the drug for about forty-eight 
hours. Then they are taken out and being restored to 
the greenhouse at once proceed to bloom, from ten 



CONTROL OF SUBJECTIVE ACTION. 79 

days to two weeks being gained in the time of their 
flowering. 

" It is a most curious phenomenon and seems to be ex- 
plained by the fact that the plants, before bearing flow- 
ers, require a period of rest. In nature this period is the 
winter, but, by putting the lilacs to sleep for a few days 
artificially, the florist is able to cheat them into the be- 
lief that they have had their repose, and, on waking up 
again, they decide that it is time to bring forth their 
flowers." 

The subconscious mind of man, being far 
more intelligent, more readily accepts what the 
objective may offer. It is through it that en- 
vironment acquires so profound control over us. 
The circumstances of daily life, the weather, the 
atmospheric pressure, the thought currents in 
which we are immersed, and a thousand other 
things are thus doing their work upon us either 
for good or ill. There is no room for doubt con- 
cerning this. We are being continually acted 
upon in many ways, and, in the absence of par- 
ticular direction, our subjective minds are con- 
trolled in great measure by those suggestions 
which most powerfully impress. 

Our standard of ethics, our varying moods, 
our physical states, our impulses and our intu- 
itions thus often find their ultimate sources in 
extraneous influences. 

IN GRANTING THE POWER OF ENVIRONMENT WE 
SHOULD OWN OUR HELPLESSNESS AND UTTER SUB- 
JECTIVITY DID NOT THE POWER RESIDE WITHIN US 
TO INHIBIT, TO MODIFY AND TO DIRECT. 

All carefully noted observation and experi- 
ence go to show that the subjective mind — the 

GREAT REGULATOR AND CONTROLLER OF VITAL AC- 
TIVITIES—IS SUSCEPTIBLE TO EDUCATION, BOTH FROM 
WITHIN AND WITHOUT; BY OURSELVES AND BY 



80 NEW METHODS IN DETAIL. 

others. It is of the utmost importance that 
this conviction take possession of us, since with- 
out it no progress in the new methods can be 
made. 

To him who does accept this as a profound 
truth y possibilities of usefulness and happiness 
open up to which others are entire strangers. 



VII 



New Methods in Detail 

(continued) 



(81) 



1 Where the normal man, with normal inclinations, 
will find pleasure, the abnormal man. with abnormal in- 
clinations, will encounter pain, and vice versa. Pleasure 
and pain follow tendency, as the shadow follows the 
body."— T. H. Ribot. 

' Our ego is the permanent nexus, which is never itself in a 
state of consciousness, but which holds states of conscious- 
ness together."— Herbert Spencer. 

1 I hold that the enigma of hypnotism has no single answer 
which solves it. * * * I hold emphatically that hypnotic 
changes are primarily physiological, rather than patho- 
logical—supernormal, rather than abnormal." 

— F. W. H. Myers. 



(82j 



CHAPTER VII. 

NEW METHODS IN DETAIL— Continued. 

Suggestibility. 

Effective mental healing is de- 
pendent upon certain conditions, one of which is 
receptivity on the part of the patient. His es- 
sential co-operation with the healer is analogous 
to that subsisting between pupil and teacher 
The cure is effected by rousing into normal 
activity soul powers lying dormant within^ and 
not through the arbitrary imposition of any 
influence from without The patient is not de- 
ceived — truth alone is presented to his mind, 
and when this reaches the plane of soul con- 
sciousness it is immediately recognized, ac- 
cepted and applied. All genuine healing, 
therefore, in the last analysis, is 5-^-healing. 
A sick person is one lacking in self-knowledge ; 
yet this quality inheres in the soul, and the 
simple office of the healer is to bring it above 
the threshold of consciousness — to render the 
potential actual. 

HEALTH 

"SSL-.— 

FIGURE 5. A Diagrammatic Representation of Suggestive Action. 

At the same time it should be understood that 
failure of the subject to unhesitatingly accept 

(83) 




84 NEW METHODS IN DETAIL. 

the suggestion does not prove an effectual bar. 
Reiteration of the suggestion under auspicious 
conditions may at last break down prejudice 
and give full effect to our efforts. This is 
wrought, it may be, not by direct conviction of 
the reason, but by gradual and unconscious ac- 
ceptance on the part of the subconscious faculty. 
Though stoutly opposed by the objective thought, 
it is taken up, little by little, into the uncon- 
scious and worked out to a conclusion. A new 
thought or a new custom appeals more forcibly 
and more effectually to the subconscious. 

It is common observation that, when we have 
been studying hard upon something new, with but 
little apparent progress, if we lay it by for a few 
days or weeks, without conscious thought upon 
it, on resuming our study we find that better 
progress is made. The suggestions have 
had time to do their work and there has been a 
clarification of the mental turbidity. 

Thus it is also that our opinions and prejudices 
undergo change by a process of unconscious 
rumination and unremembered reasoning. The 
subjective has been busy with its propositions, 
and, without our knowledge, our own deeper 
selves have been conducting our education. 

The Hypnotic State. 

The state most favorable for 
the reception of suggestion is that of hypnosis. 
In that state the mind of the subject is most en 
rapport with that of the operator, and the im- 
pression is correspondingly profound. 

Hypnosis has its advantages and its disad- 
vantages from the physician's point of view. 

Mr. F. W. H. Myers, for many years con- 



THE HYPNOTIC STATE. 85 

spicuous as a scientific investigator of psychic 
phenomena, well illustrates the value and action 
of hypnotism in the following words: 

"In waking consciousness I am like the proprietor 
of a factory whose machinery I do not understand* My 
foreman — my subliminal self — weaves for me so many 
yards of broadcloth per diem (my ordinary vital proc- 
esses as a matter of course). If I want any pattern 
more complex I have to shout my orders in the din of 
the factory, where only two or three inferior workmen 
hear me, and shift their looms in a small and scattered 
way. Such are the confused and capricious results of 
the first, the more familiar stages of hypnotic sugges- 
tion. At certain intervals, indeed, the foreman stops 
most of the looms, and uses the freed power to stoke 
the engine and to oil the machinery. This, in my 
metaphor, is sleep, and it will be effective hypnotic 
trance if I can get tne foreman to stop still more of the 
looms, come out of his private room, and attend to my 
orders — my self-suggestions — for their repair and re- 
arrangement. The question for us proprietors then is 
how we can best get at our potent but secluded fore- 
men; in what way we can make to our subliminal selves 
effective suggestions. And here I think we are for the 
present at the end of theory. We must look for 
guidance to actual experience, not to hypnotism alone, 
but to all forms of self-suggestion which are practically 
found to remove and soothe the pains and weariness of 
large masses of common men." 

As a therapeutic measure in a large variety of 
ailments, hypnotism is entitled to much confi- 
dence and no fear of obloquy should deter one 
from its use. "Be physicians and not hypno- 
tizes," says Dr. T. Lloyd Tuckey of Aberdeen, 
' ' but learn to apply hypnotism and be ready to 
use it in suitable cases." 

"With all the resources of latter day scientific re- 
search at his disposal, there still remains a large field of 
disease which is the despair of the physician. A large 
section of it consists of disease caused by the imagi- 



86 NEW METHODS IN DETAIL. 

nation or by causes which have had their first effect on the 
imagination. These, as is truly pointed out, are any- 
thing but imaginary diseases. It is in these cases that 
the method of treatment by suggestion strikes at the 
root of the evil in a manner that no other kind of treat- 
ment can approach." 

Professor H. H. Goddard, who has investi- 
gated the subject of mental healing very thor- 
oughly, publishes a table compiled from 414 
cases treated by hypnotism by Drs. Van Rhen- 
terghem and Van Eeden. Of these, 71 were 
absolute failures, 92 were slightly or temporarily 
helped, 98 were permanently or decidedly 
ameliorated, 100 were cured, and 53 had results 
unknown. The investigation shows (1) that the 
deeper the hypnosis the larger the percentage of 
cures; (2) that not all cases are cured; (3) that 
some diseases are less amenable than others 
to cure by hypnotism. 

Dr. J. Milne Bramwell of London recently 
reported 76 cases of dipsomania and chronic 
alcoholism treated by him by hypnotic sugges- 
tion. Twenty-eight were completely cured, 36 
were improved and 12 were not helped. Only 
those who had remained abstainers for three years 
were reckoned as cured. 

As a means of changing an evil or disagreeable 
bent of mind, in either children or adults, it is to 
be commended. 

One need not hesitate to employ hypnotism in 
any case of chronic disease when there is no sat- 
isfactory response to other forms of treatment. 
The limit of its power for good in the hands of 
well-meaning physicians has not yet been deter- 
mined. 

Concerning the alleged ill-effects of repeated 
hypnosis all I need to say is that it is the uniform 



HYPNOSIS NOT ESSENTIAL. 87 

testimony of all who have used it extensively, in- 
cluding Forel, Liebault, Bernheim, Wetterstrand, 
Van Eeden, De Jong and Moll, that in no in- 
stance have they witnessed either mental or 
physical disturbance fairly attributable to it. 

Like any other therapeutic measure, this also, 
in the hands of the unskillful and designing, may 
become an instrument of evil. 

Hypnosis Not Essential 
to Effective Suggestion. 

But the power of suggestion 
is not conditioned by hypnosis. It can be prac- 
ticed with conspicuous success in any state 
wherein the physician can command the pa- 
tient's attention. 

To succeed to our liking we must, in any case, 
acquire control of the patient s present thought, 
so as to turn it whither we will. The various 
methods of doing this will be considered in their 
proper places, it being the design of this chapter 
to discuss only theories. 

Mesmerism. 

In recent years Braid's interpretation 
of the phenomena to which he gave the name 
1 'hypnotism" has been generally accepted. 
What was formerly termed Mesmerism has been 
included, against the protests of a few. 

Thomas J. Hudson, in his Law of Mental 
Medicine, has disputed at length, and with a 
show of reason, the justice and wisdom of such 
a classification. He says: 

" I have already pointed out the fallacy of this belief so 
far as material remedies are concerned. Elsewhere I 
have pointed out the fact that Braid's experiments 
demonstrated that adults could be hypnotized by his 



88 NEW METHODS IN DETAIL. 



method when suggestion in any form was out of the 
question; and the records of Mesmerism are overflowing 
with evidence of the fact that many of its most im- 
portant phenomena are produced under circumstances 
that exclude oral suggestion, or its equivalents, as a 
factor in the case. For instance, the fact that some 
animals can be Mesmerized and others hypnotized 
demonstrates the absence, in both cases, of either oral 
suggestion or any form of larvated suggestion that 
appeals to the intelligence of the subject. Moreover, 
the fact that young children can be successfully treated 
by Mesmeric methods, and not by the processes of hyp- 
notism proper, is demonstrative of the fact, not only 
that oral suggestion or its equivalent does not enter as 
a factor in either case, but that the effects of Mesmerism 
and hypnotism are due to radically and essentially dif- 
ferent proximate causes. Again, what is of equal or of 
greater interest and importance, it demonstrates the 
vastly wider range of usefulness of Mesmerism over 
hypnotism. ... It may be safely assumed that, 
broadly speaking, physical contact is the one essential 
feature of Mesmeric practice that distinguishes it from 
that of hypnotism. At least it is the only visible, tangible 
difference; and it is tacitly assumed to be the only differ- 
ence by the enemies of Mesmerism who have sought to 
show that physical contact is unnecessary. " 

Hudson proceeds to put forth a hypothesis to 
the effect that the clinical differences observed 
are due essentially to the greater facility of 
volitional action by virtue of contact, the action of 
the neurons by which consecutive contact of fila- 
ments is obtained being thus projected from one 
nerve terminal in the operator to another nerve 
terminal in the subject, thus bridging the abyss 
otherwise existing between operator and patient. 

From my own experience I am led to believe 
that suggestion is much augmented in effect by 
"the laying on of hands, " though the explana- 
tory theory put forth by Hudson is not con- 
vincing. 



VIII 



New Methods in Detail 

(continued) 



(89) 



"The ether fairly teems with the vibrating thoughts of by- 
gone ages, and all that is necessary to become possessed of 
this store of universal knowledge is to become sensitive to 
ether vibrations and learn how to translate them into or- 
dinary language. 1 ' 

"The conscious mind is the balance wheel: it is the regula- 
tor which determines the rapidity and character of vital 
action. 

"The subconscious is able to do many marvelous things and 
does them even when the conscious is poorly calculated to 
give wise direction ; but its action is not uniform and 
balanced and persistent.' 1 - Leavitt. 

''We speak of the action of will. The muscles are said to 
contract in response to it ; but to make a muscle act we do 
not issue an order and then strenuously and anxiously 
await its execution. Not at all. We merely move the part. 
There is no effort. Just so must it be in the affairs of the 
unseen realm. We will and act; ask and receive; seek 
and find, all being accomplished in one related and un- 
divided movement. There is no interval. We merely let 
come what we desire. Our volition opens the gates and 
the supply pours forth." — Leavitt. 

"Anybody may go into the business of building nis own 
mind. The thinking organ undergoes perpetual changes 
in cell structure and is never finished. 

"Even in old age it is not too late. 

"Let the esoteric mind-builder systematically devote an 
hour each day in calling up pleasant ideas and memories. 
Let him summon the finer feelings of benevolence and un- 
selfishness which are called up only now and then. Let 
him make this a regular practice, like swinging dumbbells. 
Let him gradually increase the time devoted to these psych- 
ical gymnastics, giving them sixty or ninety minutes per 
diem. 

"At the end of a month he will find the change in himself 
surprising. The alteration will be apparent in his actions 
and thoughts. 

"It will have been registered in the cell structure of his 
brain. Cells useful for good thinking will have been well 
developed, while others productive of evil will have shrunk. 
Morally speaking, the man will be a great improvement on 
his former self."— Elmer Gates. 



(90) 



CHAPTER VIII. 

NEW METHODS IN DETAIL— Continued. 

The Theory of Auto-Suggestion. 

The power of sugges- 
tion which proves so effectual when employed by 
another in one's behalf can be used with even 
greater effect upon one's self. This may sound 
like an extravagance, but it is not. It seems in- 
credible to some that one may talk to one's self 
with pronounced effect; and yet it is true. This 
is one of the evidences of our duality of mind. 

" An affirmation made even perfunctorily at first," says 
Dr. M. Woodbury Sawyer, "if one can do no more, does 
tend to unite with feeling and to become a thing of life. 
A genuine willingness to try the experiment is ail that is 
necessary to prove the truth. If one persistently and 
cheerfully ' whistles to keep up courage' there comes a 
time when the bugle call to arms becomes a pean of joy 
for an accomplished fact. But the affirmation without 
expectancy, or, worse still, positively fearing the op- 
posite, is building with one hand and tearing down with 
the other, or starting the engine forward and immediate- 
ly reversing it." 

But there is force in method and it is of con- 
siderable importance to observe the proper form- 
ula. For the necessary instruction of the phy- 
sician himself, and, through him, of his patients, 
reference is made to Part II. 

The reader will understand that the votaries of 
psychic healing believe most emphatically that all 

CURES ARE ESSENTIALLY SELF CURES. No matter 

what the particular formula set, the real process 

(91? 



92 NEW METHODS IN DETAIL. 

of restoration is effected by the subconscious fac- 
ulties of the patient. In all suggestion the appeal 
is to the subjective. At the same time it will be 
understood that the subconscious is approached 
most commonly and most easily through the 
conscious, as will be shown in the succeeding 
chapter on "The Vehicles of Suggestion." 

The subject of auto-suggestion has been intro- 
duced for two specific reasons, the force of which 
cannot fail of recognition. 

First: That it is needed by the healer in 
order that he may develop in himself the health, 
the self-control, the strength, the poise, the en- 
ergy, the wisdom, the courage, the persistency, 
the faith, the altruism and the constancy re- 
quired in one who seeks to become an efficient 
physician and surgeon — a true healer. 

Second: In order that the essential factors 
involved in cure may be faithfully applied. One 
cannot well be a good teacher without first pass- 
ing through the curriculum. 

The more we have of the same qualities that 
in our patients are recognized as conducive to 
mental and physical health, the more efficient we 
become in the work, which, to be of the right 
quality, must be to us a vocation rather than a 
mere avocation. 

One ship sails east and another sails west, 

In the very same winds that blow; 
'Tis the set of the sails, and not the gales, 
That determines the way they shall go. 



IX 



New Methods in Detail 

(continued) 



(93) 



'Washington Irving could write well, but he could not make 
a speech. Patrick Henry could make a speech that would 
carry men off their feet by its eloquence, but he could not 
write a creditable report,"— Lcavitt. 

'It is to be reckoned a piece of good fortune for a bright and 
talented youth to fall under the dominating influence of a 
master mind. In endeavoring to walk in the footsteps of 
an intellectual giant, to comprehend his theories and specu- 
lations and to carry the burden of his thought, unexpected 
strength and power are developed, and when the day of 
emancipation comes— as it always does come in the case of 
gifted youth— the learner will find that he has entered a 
higher sphere of intellectual activity and will henceforth 
rank among the world's productive thinkers."— Nathan C. 
Schaeffer, " Thinking and Learning to Think." 

*' Pluck wins ! It always wins ! 
Though days be slow 
And nights be dark 'twixt days that come and go. 
Still pluck will win ; its average is sure ; 
He gains the prize who can the most endure— 
Who faces issues, he who never shirks— 
Who waits and watches, and who always works." 



(94) 



CHAPTER IX. 

NEW METHODS IN DETAIL— Continued 
THE VEHICLES OF SUGGESTION. 

"Thought is feeling," says Carpenter. It is a 
sensory product. To produce feeling there must 
be either actual or recalled contact. All thought 
springs from stimuli. These stimuli at one time 
find entrance through the auditory canal, at 
other times through the eye, often through the 
touch and so on. Even taste exercises a similar 
thought-creative influence. Besides the recog- 
nized five senses it is quite probable that there 
are occult senses — unknown and unclassified. 

Patients no doubt differ in their receptivity, 
owing in great measure to the difference in per- 
meability of their thought channels. 

In passing it may be said that a corresponding 
inequality is found in healers, arising from the 
difference in degree of their powers of thought 
concentration and ideality. An imperfectly 
formed and wavering concept cannot be driven 
home with precision and penetration. 

The principal vehicles of suggestion are the 
voice and the touch. To these may be added 
the physical expression of the operator and his 
written thought. The suggestion itself is, of 
course, a thought. 

Nor ought I to omit mention of the atmos- 
pheric ether, by means of which it is claimed 
that the thoughts themselves can be conveyed 
bodily from one to another, as in ' ' thought-trans- 

(95) 



96 NEW METHODS IN DETAIL. 

ferrence. " It is the accepted vehicle which 
makes possible so-called " absent treatment." 

Inasmuch as I discuss in another chapter the 
essential qualifications of the operator I shall 
now merely say that the vehicle, whether it be 
voice, touch, physical expression or anything 
else, must have something definite to carry, and it 
must be projected in a way to make the recipient 
feel that there is a "man behind the gun." 

The Voice. 

To make an efficient vehicle of the 
voice there must be attention given to it: it must 
be used in the right way. An energetic and 
well-formed concept is often spoiled by seeming 
indifference or by deficient energy in its delivery. 
Did you never listen to an address of superb 
character, full of helpful and interesting thought, 
without being impressed, and mentally ejacu- 
lated: "Oh, what an effect could have been 
made by the same address had it been delivered 
by a true orator!" 

I am not unreasonable enough to maintain 
that every physician who would successfully em- 
ploy psychic therapeutics must become an elo- 
cutionist. No, but I would have him cultivate 
that part of true oratory which represents gen- 
uine feeling — true sentiment. When the patient 
is assured that there is a "balm in Gilead" for 
her lesions, it should be in tones that carry con- 
viction. 

Personal magnetism consists chiefly of genuine 
earnestness in what is said and done. To be 
magnetic one must not only be attentive to the 
thing in hand, but, like a good actor, he must 
throw into it much of himself. It may be called 



VEHICLES OF SUGGESTION. 



97 



** 



*fj 



i o 



3; i 



.n°: 



Figure 6. 



Diagrammatic Representation of the Vehicles of Suggestion. 
The continuous lines represent the objective, and the interrupted lines the 

subjective. 



98 NEW METHODS IN DETAIL. 

mental concentration — a genuine focusing of 
power upon the one object. Such thought burns 
its way. It is like the electric spark, full of 
light and heat. 

Men of power are always after this type. 
Some of them are so by nature, while many 
others have coveted and acquired the power. 
All can develop a large measure of it, if they will, 
and become successful in whatever they under- 
take. 

The Touch. 

What I have said with respect to the 
Voice is equally true of the Expression and the 
Touch. The magnetic touch has behind it a 
tremendous energy, representing faith in one's 
self and in the outcome" 01 'one's effort, repre- 
senting also pointed concentration of all the 
thought at one's command. 

It deserves also to be said that the five senses 
represent nothing more than specialized, or differ- 
entiated, feeling, or sensation. 

The Need of Sincerity. 

Bear in mind, also, that the 
thought itself requires genuine conviction behind 
it. To effect the designed result faith must 
match faith. While I am convinced that the 
doubter — the faithless — who can muster good 
mental concentration will achieve far better re- 
sults than the most genuine believer who is un- 
able to command his own thought, I am of the 
opinion that no true success is possible upon a 
basis of deceit. 



THE NEED OF SINCERITY. 99 



To Do Our Very Best 
We Must Be Genuine. 

The vibrations of insincerity are 
cognizable by a sensitive subject. Some years ago 
I knew a clergyman of much talent and energy 
who was not giving the best satisfaction in the 
society to which he preached. He was making a 
fair endeavor and was exceedingly anxious to 
please. Learning that many criticised the character 
of his preaching, in desperation he declared that, 
if the officials of the church would only intimate 
to him the kind of preaching they wanted, he 
would guarantee it to them. But this very offer 
was his undoing, because it demonstrated, what 
had long been felt, that he lacked the sincerity 
which must characterize all truly successful effort. 

LOFC 



Is life a failure •? Look within thy soul 
And let thy Higher Self point out the goal 
Of thy desire, which thou wilt never reach 
Unless thou hearest what thy Seer can teach. 
Have perfect faith in thine own power to do 
The thing thou wishest, then be firmly true 
To thine Ideal, until the world shall see 
Success inherent in thy work and thee. 

—Helen Chauncey. 



(100) 



X. 



New Methods in Detail 

(continued) 



(101) 



"The evidence for telepathy is both good and abundant." 

—Frank Podmore. 

"The philosopher is no longer regarded as the highest type 
of humanity. The age demands that thought shall pass 
into volition, and that volition shall find expression in 
action," 

"The conscious side of thought is sensation. It must be 
because we remember it. There was contact and hence 
memory. 

"Is it not possible that we are bathed in a sea of motion 
(thought), and that we feel what we invite— that is to say, 
we feel what, by our development and volition, we attract? 
In that case thoughts are things. They pass, and in pass- 
ing leave their impress. 

"Will is merely an adjustments turning of attention) The 
next step is connecting sensation with consciousness. In 
consciousness we perceive what we have continually, but 
unconsciously, felt. We open our minds, or close them, in 
willing, and thought does the rest. 

"The thoughts themselves are evidently vibrations. If not, 
how can thought be transferred from one mind to another, 
as in telepathy?"— Leavitt. 

"Men mark when they hit, and never mark when they miss." 

—Bacon. 



(102) 



CHAPTER X. 

NEW METHODS IN DETAIL— Continued. 
TELEPATHY. 

Concerning the question of the universal ether 
as a bearer of thought I may now be indulged in 
a few observations. 

In these days of telegraphy and telephony 
people are talking a great deal about telepathy 
or thought-transferrence. The same phenom- 
enon has also been called "mind reading." 

Among people of all classes we find many who 
have no faith whatever in the alleged phenomena 
and many others who have unbounded confi- 
dence in them. 

The Psychic Research Society has done a 
good deal to elucidate the phenomena ascribed 
to telepathy, concerning which elucidation the 
following summing up by a member of the so- 
ciety, based upon undoubted phenomena, ought 
to set the question at rest. That the atmos- 
pheric ether, or something akin to it, as yet un- 
recognized, does act as a vehicle of thought, 
under conditions, the laws determining which are 
not yet clear, appears to be a fact. 

The results of investigations undertaken by the 
Psychic Research Society are thus given by 
Edward T. Bennett, who was for many years 
one of the society's secretaries. He says: 
"The conclusion seems to be irresistible, that the five 
senses do not exhaust the means by which knowledge may 

(103) 



104 NEW METHODS IN DETAIL. 



enter the mind. In other words, the investigator seems 
to be driven to the conclusion that Thought-Trans- 
ferrence or Telepathy must now be included among 
scientifically proved facts. The interpretation of the 
facts, the means by which knowledge is thus conveyed, 
the mode of its transmission, belong to a different 
branch of the inquiry." 

Experiments thus far made have translated 
impressions in the terms of physical sense. To 
learn what mind can really do in the direction of 
sending out its thoughts, something more than 
this is required. 

"It does not follow," says Leibnitz, "because 
we do not perceive thought that it does not ex- 
ist. It is a great source of error to believe there 
is no perception in the mind but that of which it 
is conscious.' ' That there is both an inner and 
an outer sense of feeling finds color in a physi- 
ological study of phenomena. Sensations are 
produced and their effects follow without our 
realizing either the perception or its effects. A 
multitude of impressions are continually pelting 
us, though we are conscious of but few of them. 
Moreover, we should remember that the im- 
pressions we do not recognize are not only there 
just as much as those we do recognize, but that 
they are sometimes more profound. 

The nervous system is a harp with a thousand 
strings, upon which the whole world of thought 
and action is playing. Put your ear to the 
sounding board of a piano and you will hear the 
vibrations of wind and wave, of passing wagons 
and trains, of footsteps and the lower hum of 
cosmic motion. Just so do external forces 
awaken harmonies or create discords within us. 
We are elated or depressed, inspired, animated 
and enlightened, or are discouraged and over- 



TELEPATHY. 105 



come, but we know not why. Go deeply enough 
and we shall find the cause. Sensations are only 
the effects of vibrations. 

Now here is the important consideration : from 

OUT THIS MASS OF DIVERSIFIED VIBRATIONS WE CAN 
LEARN TO ADMIT ONLY THOSE THAT MINISTER TO 

comfort and profit. To all the others we may 
become insensate. They reach us, to be sure, 
but our minds may be so under control that they 
shall be refused thought space, and accordingly 
pass unnoticed and without pronounced effect. 

F. W. H. Myers himself, after taking every 
precaution against possible sources of error, wit- 
nessed the effect of one mind upon another 
through the power of hypnotism exercised at a 
distance by a Dr. Gilbert. The doctor strongly 
willed a woman more than a half-mile away to 
come at once to his office. To be sure he had 
frequently hypnotized her, but in this instance 
the possibility of collusion or of post-hypnotic 
suggestion was cautiously ruled out. 

The woman came, in a state of hypnosis, and 
remained under its power until released by the 
doctor. 

From a scientific work by Prof. Nathan C. 
Schaeffer, entitled " Thinking and Learning to 
Think," recently published, I take the following: 
"The stimulating influences which go forth from a live 
teacher are partly conscious and partly unconscious. 
The latter are the more effective. Minds gifted with 
quickening power create about themselves an 'intellect- 
ual atmosphere' that is like the invigorating atmos- 
phere of the mountains or the tonic breezes which 
blow from the sea. The woman who touched the hem 
of the Savior's garment felt at once the vivifying influ- 
ences which were all the time going forth from the Great 
Teacher. Here we stand face to face with the greatest mys- 
tery of the teacher's art." 



106 NEW METHODS IN DETAIL. 

Says Peter C. Austin: 

" Particles of vibrations strike our nerve points in one 
way and we see light or color; in another way and 
we feel heat. Our nerves and brain transmute the mo- 
tions into forms of sensation. The brain is the trans- 
lator of motion into images; of sensations into ideas. 
There is no reason why there should be any limit to the 
modes of molecular or ethereal motion; hut our senses, as we 
call our translators, are but few in number \hence we recognise 
but few of them." 

Our physical senses comprehend a certain 
range of vibrations. All outside the range thus 
far set for us is a blank: there is no conscious 
recognition of anything. Animal life gives con- 
clusive evidence of perception beyond the range 
of human consciousness, and may we not fairly 
conclude that there are many vibrations repre- 
senting things beyond our present conscious ken ? 

Moreover, since much of our life is hidden in 
unconsciousness, have we not a right to assume 
that the subconsciousness has senses of its own 
that play an important part in determining con- 
scious action and feeling ? 

Says Prof. Wm. James: 
"Vibrations are, generally speaking, aerial waves. 
When the waves are non-periodic the result is a noise; 
when periodic it is a note or tone. Loudness depends 
on force of waves. The timbre of the sound depends on 
the form of the waves. The pitch of C is due to 132 vi- 
brations a second; that of the octave C to twice as many 
— 264. The highest pitched audible note is due to 38,- 
016. Very low and very high vibrations are inaudible." 

Says Prof. John D. Quackenbos: 
"The time has indeed come, as Maeterlinck predicted 
it would, when souls may know of each other without 
the intermediary of the senses." 

Says Clark Bell: 
"Telepathy, as it is regarded by scientists who accept 



TELEPATHY. 107 



it as a fact, is some unknown sense or power of the hu- 
man body by which as a physical process communica- 
tion is held between brain and brain of the human or- 
ganism — some means by which the perceptions are 
reached in some manner analogous to the known and 
well-defined transmission of the electric current or the 
action of gravitation which we know exists. But we 
are as yet unable to comprehend how it acts or to know 
its methods." 

Prof. Hyslop and many other students of 
spiritistic phenomena declare that either so- 
called spiritualism or telepathy of a most lucid 
character is true — the one or the other. Here 
are the horns of the dilemma. Let doubters 
take their choice. Since Professor Hyslop is a 
man of scientific attainments, and a practical man, 
such a conclusion should be allowed unusual 
weight. 

The evidence herein adduced gives the ques- 
tion of " absent treatment" a standing before a 
medical tribunal, and I am sure there will be no 
adverse criticism of the author in giving it serious 
consideration. 

Says Prof. Crooks: 
" If we accept the theory that the brain is composed of 
separate elements — nerve cells — then we must presume 
that each of these components, like every other bit of 
matter, has its movements of vibration, and will, under 
suitable conditions, be affected; as, for instance, the 
nerve cells of the retina by vibration in the ether. If 
another neuron, situated not far away, should acquire 
the same movement of vibration, there seems no good 
reason why they should not materially affect each other 
through the ether." 

"The earth does move," said Galileo, and so it 
does. The scientific men of his day were theo- 
logical bigots — and bigotry is always cruel. A 
few years ago we all were ready to commit those 
who avowed faith in "absent treatment" to the 



108 



NEW METHODS IN DETAIL. 



insane asylum, and most physicians are still 
ready to do so. The authorities are today about 
to put on trial for fraud a " mental scientist" 
because she claims to be able to cure ailments by 
means of health-thoughts sent to her patients 
through the ether. History repeats itself, not in 
identical, but in analogous, experiences. 



CON3C/OUSNESS 




Figure 7. Telepathic Lines of Communication. A, line of conscious 
thought transference ; B, B, lines of unconscious transference. 



We boast our twentieth-century toleration; 
but mankind is nearly as bigoted as ever. 

There is no disputing the fact that those who 
have given the subject of telepathy attentive 
thought and patient investigation have become 
convinced of its truth and practicability. My 
own experience has given me unwavering con- 
victions. / know that in some way thought can 
be transmitted from one conscious mind to another; 
and I have good reason to believe that it can be 
transmitted still more forcibly and fully to the un- 
conscious mind of the percipient. 

Having become convinced, one finds ' ' absent 
treatments" on practically the same footing as 
suggestion in general. In one instance vibra- 
tions carry the thought in plain language to the 
patient — access to the mind being had through 
the auditory nerve — while in the other, vibrations 



TELEPATHY. 109 



bear the thought in graphic images. It is much 
like the difference existing between wire and 
aerial telegraphy. 

Formerly I laughed in derision at the sugges- 
tion of curing by suggestion, and I laughed again 
at the claim that suggestions could be made to 
jump great chasms of space to do their work. 
Now I am not only willing to admit the scientific 
possibility of both, but am a hearty believer in 
their practicability. 

One of the evidences of senility is inability, or, 
oftener, refusal, to accept new ideas. The old 
physician is apt to cling to his well-practiced 
routine. His mind has been accustomed to run 
in certain channels, and its stream of conscious- 
ness is so viscid that it does not readily wear new 
channels. 

Happy is he who can keep his mental powers 
in a state of plasticity and his thoughts limpid. 

The Sage of Concord says: 
" God offers to every mind its choice between truth and 
repose. Take which you please — you can never have 
both. Between these, as a pendulum, man oscillates. 
He in whom the love of repose predominates will ac- 
cept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first po- 
litical party he meets — most likely his father's. He gets 
rest, commodity and reputation; but he shuts the door 
of truth. He in whom the love of truth predominates 
will keep himself aloof from all moorings and float. He 
will abstain from dogmatism and recognise all the opposite 
negations between which, as walls, his being is swung. He 
submits to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect 
opinion, but he is a candidate for truth, as the other is 
not, and respects the highest law of his being." 

"Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" 
we have been asking — and always with an im- 
plied negative. To be sure it is a long step for 
medical men to take, this admitting even the 



110 NEW METHODS IN DETAIL. 

possibility of efficient suggestion by absent 
treatment. The testimony herein adduced will 
not be convincing to all. I neither expect nor 
desire such an effect. If it awakens in a few an 
honest endeavor to know the truth it will serve a 
useful purpose. 

WE CAN BE TOLERANT WITHOUT BEING CREDULOUS. 
WE CAN BE SINCERE WITHOUT BEING SEVERE. 

Says Carlyle: 
" I will allow a thing to struggle for itself in the world, 
with any sword or tongue or implement it has or can lay 
hold of. We will let it preach and pamphleteer and 
fight, and to the uttermost bestir itself, and do, beak 
and claws, whatsoever is in it; very sure that it will, in 
the long run, conquer nothing which does not deserve to be 
conquered" 



XI. 



New Methods in Detail 

(continued) 



(111) 



"Great men are they who see that spiritual force is stronger 
than material force ; that thought rules the world." 

—Emerson. 

"Two medical students were engaged in dissection: one 
playfully passed the handle of his scalpel across the finger 
of his friend, who started, shrieked and then confessed 
that he felt the pain of the blade cutting through to the 
bone . ' '—Gratiolet. 

"The conclusion is not to be resisted that all the functions 
of the central nervous system, and all manifestations of 
life and mental activity, fall under the conception of reflex 
action. No ganglionic cell is functional without a suf- 
ficient reason, which is called the stimulus, in the language 
of physiology ; no volition without motive, in the language 
of psychology."— Ed. v. Hartmann. 

"How strange that such a therapeutic agent should have 
been so ignored, that by none of our leading surgeons 
and physicians do we see the influence of the human mind 
over the human body really seriously dealt with. One may 
find here and there an honorable exception, it is true, 
distinguished alike by his rarity and by the obloquy he 
incurs.' '—Schofield. 



(112) 



CHAPTER XL 

NEW METHODS IN DETAIL— Continued. 
THE CONDITIONS OF EFFECTIVE SUGGESTION. 

Faith. 

Dr. Edwin W. Pyle very aptly observes: 
1 ' Faith from childhood to age is more or less a 
panacea for human ills; and, however reposed, 
should never be rudely shaken. Whether it be 
in prayer or in the plainest doctor it is the same 
precious commodity, without which we can do 
nothing and with which we, too, can work 
wonders." 

When Jesus was in a certain region preaching 
his gospel of hope and good will he found him- 
self unable to do many wonders because of the 
unbelief of the people who presented themselves. 
We do not know that he tried and failed, in any 
instance, as, indeed, he probably did not, for 
there is a subtle and convincing sense of rapport 
between individuals when there is vibratory har- 
mony, and, an equally convincing sense of its ab- 
sence when it does not exist. 

Every physician has experienced the par- 
alyzing effect of skepticism in certain of his 
patients, or their friends, and has longed to be 
rid of the case that he may have had in hand. 
Under such conditions even drug remedies fail 
to exhibit their customary effects. 

An indispensable condition of cure under any 
form of treatment is the existence of a spirit — a 
breath-— an atmosphere of faith. The patient 

(113) 



114 NEW METHODS IN DETAIL. 

himself, in a rational state, and the physician, 
must be in the confident — the expectant — frame 
of mind. There must be a settling back of the 
mind upon a sense of approaching aid; there 
must be a hushed, but quickened, mentality. 
"Whenever self-consciousness is subdued," very justly 
observes Prof. Barrett, "when the known and claimant 
' me ' retires to the background, then an opportunity is 
afforded for the emergence of the * other me ' of that 
large and unrecognized part of our personality which 
lies below the threshold of our consciousness." 

* 'Then, " some one asks, ' 'do you regard a state 
of doubt, or of positive disbelief, an effectual bar 
to curative action?" 

I certainly do consider it a bar to immediate 
effects. But, as I have elsewhere taken occasion 
to point out, iteration and reiteration of affirm- 
ations of the right character are capable ulti- 
mately of so changing the most obdurate mind 
(probably by first convincing the subjective) that 
the conditions essential to cure may become es- 
tablished. The most scornful opponent of a 
measure may thus be made over into a believer 
and supporter. 

And, again, despite the bluster and avowed un- 
belief of some patients, there is a subconscious 
acceptance of the proposed tenets, and cure 
may become established in the very face of out- 
ward opposition. 

But the truth remains that, as a condition of 
cure — the most essential — there must exist a 
substratum of faith. 

The importance of this element of cure can- 
not be overstated. Floyd B. Wilson sets it forth 
none too emphatically when he says: 
"The path to the end is through the gateway of faith. 
If the faith be absolute, the result will come — note 



FAITH. 115 



carefully, please — if the faith he absolute the result will come, 
whether it be a blind or an intelligent faith. " 

Again some one asks : 
' 'Faith in what? In the truth of the particular 
theories proposed?" 

No. 
"In the physician himself?" 

Not necessarily. 
"In Divine interposition through the machinery 
involved?" 

No. 
"Well, then, faith in what ? " 

JUST FAITH THAT THE THING IS ABOUT TO BE DONE. 

One may be unable to accept the tenets pre- 
sented; one may be unable, either from ignorance 
or lack of settled conviction, to feel a sense of 
faith in any particular theory of cure, yet con- 
viction may seize upon the subject and he be 
able to say in all truth: "I believe." 

Of course it is far better for one's faith to have 
a distinct basis. All ought to be able to give "a 
reason for the hope " that is in them. 

Moreover, the more exalted the object of faith, 
the more energetic the action. If one accepts the 
proffered cure as coming direct from the hands 
of an all-wise and all-powerful God the effect 
is apt to be deeper and the action more pro- 
nounced. And yet it is possible for a patient of 
intelligence to accept the theory of individual 
godhood — the theory that we ourselves are the 
expressions of the Divine mind — so fully and ex- 
actly that an equally pronounced result shall be 
obtained. 

The curative formula must embrace a faith in 
power, somewhere resident and ready to be put 
forth in behalf of the physical needs. 



116 NEW METHODS IN DETAIL. 

"The signs following" are always according to 
the measure of faith which characterizes the 
conditions. There is no cure without it in the 
metaphysical field, and I seriously question that 
there is cure without it in any field. Indeed, it 
is the one grand condition of achievement in any 
phase of human endeavor. 

But again some one asks: 
"If faith is a pre-requisite, how can a psychic 
foothold be obtained in the instances of infants 
and the unconscious ? " 

Have I not just quoted from Prof. Barrett a 
sufficient answer to this question ? ' ' Whenever 
self -consciousness is subdued, " he says, . . . 
* ' then an opportunity is afforded for the emer- 
gence of the 'other me.' " And we should bear 
in mind that it is the "other me" who does the 
curative work. 

The healer (who should always be an edu- 
cated physician by preference, but who has 
thus far been a layman, owing to the inane de- 
nunciation of psychic methods by the profession) 
-—the healer, I say, in such a case has almost 
unimpeded access to the fountains of subjective 
thought. No matter what the state of objective 
consciousness, the subjective is supposed always 
to be amenable to impression. 

It is evident that silence is a contributing factor 
to potent impression. It is only under the spell 
of perfect quiet that attention, both objective 
and subjective — both supraliminal and subliminal 
— can best be commanded. To secure silence 
and attention in the patient should, then, consti- 
tute an early feature of every attempt to prac- 
tice suggestive therapy. 



FAITH. 117 



Faith Is More Effective That 
Has a Rational Basis. 

Another condition of con- 
spicuous success in psychic healing is the afford- 
ing of a rational basis for belief in the measures 
proposed. One should seek to rest his faith on 
a stable foundation. While the inexact inves- 
tigator may be misled by the startling postulates 
of enthusiasts concerning the powers of thought, 
the more thorough student will find enough clear- 
cut and rational statements of principles arranged 
by those as capable of sifting evidence and putting 
it into logical and exact form as are observers in 
other departments of scientific research. 

It is manifestly unfair as well as unwise to 
suppose that both the psychic healer and his pa- 
tients are laboring under the power of a delusion 
which a logically -constructed syllogism would 
quickly dissipate. 

Energy of the Suggestion. 

The depth and power of the 
impression is determined, in la,rge measure, by 
the energy- with which the suggestion is put forth. 
Though it is contrary to the rules of rhetoric 
to indulge freely in the use of italics and capitals 
with a view to emphasis, he who would produce 
the best effect on the average reader should 
freely use them. A monotone is not impressive. 
To excite and hold the attention of another it is 
advisable occasionally to raise the voice and 
pound with the fist. Write important thoughts 
in LARGE LETTERS if you would make 
deaf minds hear. Prick and slap the listener if 
you would secure his best attention to what you 
ha,ve in mind. 



118 NEW METHODS IN DETAIL. 

One of the essentials, then, of effective sug- 
gestion, and one that the healer should make 
conspicuous among the rules governing his meth- 
ods, is that the suggestion be latmched with 
energy. By the term " energy" I do not neces- 
sarily mean loudness of tone, though in some in- 
stances, and in treating certain people, this is re- 
quired. But the suggestion should be uttered in 
tones replete with nervous tension. 

It is not the blatant orator who makes the 
best impressions on all people. We often turn 
with disgust from one who declaims in loud 
tones, under the feeling that he endeavors to 
make up in volume of voice what he lacks in 
quality of thought. Among some, it is true, but 
chiefly among the ignorant and coarse, such a 
speaker may take well. 

What I mean is that the suggestion, whatever 
its nature, ought to be uttered in a voice full of 
earnestness and deep feeling. A mere whisper 
of this character may be more effective than 
louder tones. 

The thought that is being driven home must be 
clothed in a garb of suitable words and carry 
with it a conscious purpose to impress. It must 
come from the mind hot and vibratory if we ex- 
pect it to have the designed effect. 

Duration of the Suggestion, 

In the same connection it 
should be remembered that the potency of the 
suggestion is determined in large measure not 
alone by the energy of the stimulus, but also by 
the duration of it. Accordingly, a weak drug 
action or a weak volitionary movement is rela- 



HISTIONIC SUGGESTION. 119 

tively inefficient but may still accomplish good if 
long continued. 

Another important factor in the production of 
curative phenomena is found in the selective — 
the differential — action of the stimulus, of which 
the carefully-selected remedy is the best ex- 
ample. 

Histionic Suggestion. 

The term "Histionic Sugges- 
tion " has been given by Hudson to that form of 
suggestion which is made in connection with 
physical contact. Concerning it he says: 
" Histionic suggestion combines all that is valuable in 
all other forms of suggestion, and, moreover, it renders 
hypnotism unnecessary in any case." 

The essence of histionic suggestion lies in 
spinal massage in connection with suitable as- 
surance of relief. "The essential thing to be 
observed in all cases, " he says, "is that the 
mind must be concentrated upon the work in 
hand; otherwise the work is purely mechanical, 
depending for its efficiency upon mechanical 
stimulation of the nerves, the same as in ordinary 
massage. It is, however, more efficient than or- 
dinary massage, because the effect is more di- 
rect upon the nerves involved." 

Those of much experience with massage have 
observed a wide difference between operators in 
the matter of salutary effect on the patient. I 
am satisfied that the difference finds its chief 
cause in the degree of mental concentration and 
faith of the operator. 



The man who is perpetually hesitating which of two things 
he will do first will do neither. The man who resolves, but 
suffers his resolution to be changed by the first counter- 
suggestion of a friend —who fluctuates from opinion to 
opinion, from plan to plan, and veers like a weather-cock 
to every point of the compass, with every breath of caprice 
that blows— can never accomplish anything real or useful. 
It is only the man who carries into his pursuits that great 
quality which Lucan ascribes to Caesar, nescia virtus stare 
loco— -who first consults wisely, then resolves firmly, and 
then executes his purpose with inflexible perseverance, 
undismayed by those petty difficulties which daunt a weaker 
spirit— that can advance to eminence in any line." 

—William Wirt* 



(120) 



XII 



THE 

Medical Profession not Disposed to 
Adopt Mental Methods 



"It was necessary that the Message of God should 
be told to you first ; but, since you reject it and 
reckon yourselves not worthy of the Immortal Life, — 
we turn to the Gentiles !" 

(121) 



"Stand close to all, but lean on none, 
And if the crowd desert you, 
Stand just as fearlessly alone 

As if the throng begirt you ; 
And learn, what long the wise have known, 
Self-flight alone can hurt you." 

- William S. Shurtlcff. 

'The things that are really for thee, gravitate to thee. 
. Oh believe, as thou livest, that every sound that is 
spoken over the ronnd world which thou oughtest to hear, 
will vibrate on thine ear. Every proverb, every book, 
every by-word that belongs to thee for aid or comfort, 
shall surely come home through open or winding passages.' 

—Emerson. 

'He only is the growing man who gives himself repeated op- 
portunity to change even his most sacred convictions." 

— Dress e? , 

'A truth is a truth no matter by whom discovered." 

— Leavitt. 

'By their fruits, and not by their roots, we shall know 
them." 

"Helpfulness stands like a maid at your gate ; 

Why should you think you will find her by roving? 
Never was greater mistake than to hate- 
Try loving." 



(122) 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE MEDICAL PROFESSION NOT DISPOSED TO ADOPT 
MENTAL METHODS. 

Who Should Practice It? 

Probably it belongs to the med- 
ical profession and can be better" utilized by the 
trained physician and surgeon than by any one 
else — provided always, however, that he give it 
the place it rightly claims by virtue of its supe- 
rior nature and high possibilities. It is a child of 
noble parentage and fine organization, quite un- 
like the gross helps hitherto our hope and stay. 
But it is a thing of energy — a mighty engine of 
power. 

Best of all, it comes not to supplant, but to take 
the materials in which a certain degree of potency 
has been demonstrated to reside and make of them , 
by virtue of an alchemy all its own, things effect- 
ual for good. 

Says Dr. A. T. Schofield: 
"It may be asked, Why was not an attempt made 
sooner to give these unconscious faculties their proper 
place? It was made determinedly years ago in Ger- 
many and since then in England by men who, to their 
honor, undeterred by ridicule and contempt, made noble 
and partially successful efforts to establish the truth. 
But it is only now that the pendulum — so long swayed 
over to the materialistic side of the world's clock, under 
the pressure of Huxley, Tyndall and others whose great 
works on this side (England) led all men for a time to 
forget almost that there was another — has begun to 
swing back and men's ears are now open to hear and 
their hearts to believe spirit truths, especially when 

(123) 



124 THE QUESTION OF ADOPTION. 

they are supported, as they now are, from the other 
side by the best physiologists." 

The leaven of truth has been at work and I ver- 
ily believe that the time is now ripe for incorpo- 
rating psycho-therapeutics into legitimate med- 
ical practice. It is all a process of evolution, the 
characteristic course of which is from the lower 
to the higher. 

Says Hartmann in his ' ' Philosophy of the 
Unconscious'' : 

"What Schopenhauer calls ' unconscious rumination ' 
regularly happens to me when I have read a work 
which presents new points of view essentially opposed 
to my previous opinions. . . . After days, 
weeks or months we find, to our astonishment, that the 
old opinions that we had held up to that moment have 
been entirely rearranged and that new ones have been 
already lodged there. This unconscious mental process 
of digestion and assimilation I have several times ex- 
perienced in my own case." 

Even yet the advocate of psychic measures 
for human ills must expect to suffer more or less 
obloquy; but it is to be hoped that a spirit of 
tolerance has become strongly implanted in the 
professional mind that the world has not been 
accustomed to witness. After all, he who is de- 
terred from embracing a truth by fear of what 
others may think or say is a craven. 

4 ' They say. 

' ' What do they say ? 

11 Let them say." 

The Success of Charlatanry. 

Here and there great 
masters in medicine have admitted the enormous 
value of mental therapeutics, but the subject has 
not been followed up save for the sake of filthy 
lucre by quackery. 



CONSERVATISM. 125 



Speaking of mental therapy, Dr. Maudsley, in 
his splendid work entitled "Mind and Body," 
says: 

t( Quackery seems to have got hold of a truth which 
legitimate medicine fails to appreciate or use ad- 
equately." 

If any additional evidence were required to es- 
tablish the value of the means in question it 
could easily be adduced from the remarkable 
success which has attended the practice of irreg- 
ular practitioners. 

When we reflect that the giant thing in the 
curative field today [psycho-therapeutics), known 
by different titles because seen from different 
angles and in varied light, has attained its pres- 
ent proportions in the face of unmasked derision 
and open opposition, there is just cause for as- 
tonishment. Schofield is quite right when he 
says: 

" Quackery would soon come to an end and fade away 
before the spread of knowledge and the decay of super- 
stition, under the fostering care of the School Board 
and the higher educational system, but for one thing. It 
can show real cures, both undeniable and numerous, in 
spite of the vast number that may not bear scrutiny." 

Conservatism. 

Conservatism is a commendable 
trait. I reckon myself a conservative in my 
attitude toward everything which has a pro- 
nounced bearing on life's methods. 

But conservatism which shuts its eyes to 
truth, presenting from any point of the compass, 
is reprehensible. 

Be not the first by whom the new is tried; 
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside. 

" A full recognition of mental causation for all outward 
phenomena will necessitate a re-examination of systems 



i26 THE QUESTION OF ADOPTION. 



which are dignified by hoary antiquity and eminent re- 
spectability. Institutions which have exercised unques- 
tioned authority, that are intrenched behind barriers of 
intellectual scholasticism and that possess social and 
financial supremacy, instinctively feel that their infall- 
ibility is called into question. Piles of ponderous, dusty 
tomes thereby become relics of bygone speculation. 

"But mental causation for physical conditions is in 
substantial harmony with the highest and best thought 
of the seers and philosophers, from Plato down to the 
present time. 

1 'A new development is commonly introduced through 
much friction and misapprehension, until at last it finds 
its true place. We can delay a truth by opposition; but 
we can never prevent its finding, at the last, its appro- 
priate place. But what there is usually occupies all the 
available space and the intruder is told that * there 
is no room in the inn.' " — Wood. 

To me it is cause for astonishment that there 
is so strong a prejudice against the open admis- 
sion of the psychic element into a system of cure. 
I suppose there is a feeling that, were occult 
forces allowed to play a recognized part in a 
drama of physical cure, the profession might 
soon be at sea and the whole science drifting, a 
prey to every wind of doctrine. Such an ob- 
jection would have had force a decade or more 
ago, but now the most scientific minds are giv- 
ing deep study to psychology and many have 
already given standing to certain features of psy- 
chic manifestation — more particularly those per- 
taining to the cure of physical and mental dis- 
orders. 

But the prejudice of the medical mind against 
any suggestions proceeding from an extraneous 
source, whether they concern occult forces or 
not, is characteristic. Scientists were fifty years 
in bringing their minds to accept Harvey's the- 



CONSERVATISM. 127 



ory of blood circulation. Hypnotism was de- 
nounced by the medical profession until recently 
as a humbug and its phenomena declared unreal. 
Even now there are many who believe it en- 
titled to no credence. 

" Students listen with rapt attention," says a recent 
medical writer, " to an account of the merits of various 
drug remedies and feel their fingers itching with desire 
to prescribe them for sufferers, while the subject of 
mental therapeutics is mentioned only in ridicule and all 
who advocate their use are dubbed either 'quacks' or 
« Christian Scientists.' Why are these things so when 
many reputable and competent men and women have 
demonstrated that the psychic factor more than counter- 
balances all other drug remedies?" 

Let us beware. Jenner was denounced and 
so was Hahnemann. Those who in early days 
declared red curtains and coverlets valuable pre- 
ventives of pitting in variola were called char- 
latans and pretenders. Our established conser- 
vatism and distrust of new methods are liable to 
carry us too far. It is worthy of notice that 
Niels Finsen of Copenhagen, learning by exper- 
iment that red glass protects patients from the 
actinic rays and prevents pitting in the very same 
disease, has finally been hailed as a great reformer. 

ienner's idea has been universally adopted and 
lahnemann has been recognized as a genuine 
contributor to scientific research. 

A degree of conservatism is to be encouraged, 
lest we fall under the power of shams. ' ' The 
fact is," says Canon Wilberforce, "that there is 
always a fringe of peril around the skirts of every 
truth. Truth sets free, and when slaves are 
first emancipated some of them will turn liberty 
into license." 

The trouble is we do not listen to new propo- 



128 THE QUESTION OF ADOPTION. 

sitions with receptive faculties; we listen with 
our prejudices. We are today the slaves of pre- 
conceived opinion. Our prejudices environ us as 
the walls of a prison. 

I take it that the chief objection raised by the 
medical mind against accepting psychic remedies 
lies in the fact that they represent unseen forces 
whose modes of action are beyond the ken of 
man in his present state of development. But 
such a prejudice has no standing before the 
tribunal of reason. We use drug remedies freely, 
but who has the temerity to allege that he under- 
stands the basis of the selective affinity of certain 
drugs for certain organs and tissues, or even why 
chemical action follows a prescribed and invari- 
able course ? 

The power in either case is inscrutible, esoteric ', 
and y in a sense, spiritual. The only essential dif- 
ference is that in one case the physical sense 
perceives the material embodiment or expression 
of the energy and in the other the psychic sense 
is the only percipient; but can one say that the 
latter is not just as reliable as the former? 

Some are slow to learn because of present con- 
tentment with their meager attainments. Many 
people come to the threshold of knowledge with 
much the feeling of the boy who, when asked 
by a visiting official why he came to school, re- 
plied that he came there to sit and wait for 
school to let out. 

Too Much Fractional 
Teaching and Practice. 

There is altogether too much 
fractional teaching in all departments of learning. 
One finds in the observance of certain dietary 



THE RATIONAL ATTITUDE. 129 

rules great relief of one's particular ailment which 
may have been due to imperfect alimentation. 
The rules adopted, because well suited to that 
particular case, effect a cure, and the subject at 
once jumps to the conclusion that the same thing 
is a cure for undifferentiated ailments. Another 
finds in mental culture what he converts into a 
panacea. 

There is a woeful lack of discrimination in our 
ranks as well as outside them. Cases ought to 
be more carefully scrutinized and a systematic 
course of treatment then adopted. 

The Rational Attitude. 

The owl is like some men, 

He's rated wise, but not 
For things he ever did, 

Or thoughts he ever thought. 

And, like some men I know, 

And men that you know, too, 

The owl just sits and hoots 
At things that others do. 

We must expect to run across many human 
owls, but the rational attitude toward psycho- 
therapeutics ought to be assumed by the pro- 
fession without regard to them. That attitude is 
(1) one of willingness to be convinced and (2) 
one of purpose to utilize when convinced. It 
requires unusual courage to face the abnormal 
prejudice against the possibility of cure of phys- 
ical ills by psychic means that fills the average 
medical mind, since one knows that by advocat- 
ing psychic claims he subjects himself to the 
contumely of the general body of the medical 



130 THE QUESTION OF ADOPTION. 

profession. But this consideration ought not to 
deter us. 

Buxton wisely says: 
"The longer I live the more I am certain that the great 
difference between men, between the feeble and the 
powerful, the great and the insignificant, is energy — in- 
vincible determination; a purpose once fixed, and, then, 
death or victory. That quality will do anything which 
can be done in this world; and no talents or circum- 
stances — no opportunities — will make a two-legged 
creature a Man without it." 

Certain Concessions. 

There are many, in all the 
schools of medical practice, who concede to 
psychic measures a degree of curative influence. 
Some have gone so far as to commend psycho- 
therapeutics to certain patients possessed of im- 
aginary ailments, under the conviction that it 
will cure "when there is nothing the matter." 
Few, very few, are willing to concede more. 

To all such I commend a perusal of the fol- 
lowing from the pen of Edward T. Bennett, who 
was for many years Assistant Secretary of the 
Psychic Research Society of Great Britain. 
What he says is based on the scientific inquiries 
made by the society into the question of cure of 
disease by mental therapeutics: 
"An attempt has been made to draw a line between 
nervous cases, or cases due more or less to the imagina- 
tion, and actual physical or organic cases. It has been 
alleged that only the former class are amenable to psy- 
chic treatment. But experience does not justify this conclu- 
sion. Physical and organic effects, even diseases, can be 
caused simply by mental impression. It seems, there- 
fore, unreasonable to reject the idea that mental treat- 
ment may be efficacious as a remedial agent, not only 
in nervous disorders and in what may be called imagi- 
nary ailments, but also in cases of organic disease, even 



NOT SUITED TO ALL. 131 

in cases which under ordinary circumstances require 
surgical treatment." 

It may be worth while also to consider the fol- 
lowing : 

Bosanquet believes that tumor-formation may 
be ascribed to the breaking loose of certain cells 
from their nervous control. It is well established 
that glandular activity, and probably the nutri- 
ment of many other forms of cells, are under the 
control of the nervous system. Should this con- 
trol be lost, it is conceivable that, instead of at- 
rophy, excessive growth may result, limited in 
extent only by the amount of nutriment sup- 
plied the cells. 

My own observation in a number of cases con- 
firms the growing conviction that the scope of 
psycho-therapy is not limited to neuroses. 

Prof. James thinks that the dividing line be- 
tween troubles classified as * ' nervous " and those 
known as " organic, " is an arbitrary one, as the 
nerves control the entire economy. Hence on 
the whole he is " inclined to think that the heal- 
ing action, like the morbid one, springs from the 
plane of the normally unconscious mind." 

Psycho-Therapeutics in Its 
Purity Not Suited to All. 

There is a large body of 
people in every community whose intellectual 
senses are so dull and whose powers of reasoning 
are so deficient that they can comprehend the 
action of naught but the gross and materialistic. 
The only way to reach their minds and produce 
an effect is through their physical senses. A 
concept of energy that transcends the physical, 
and that is by far the most potential, is out of 



132 THE QUESTION OF ADOPTION. 

their power. Such people must be given faith 
props. They cannot walk without crutches. 
They can be healed only through the interven- 
tion of media, such as drugs, instruments, appli- 
cations, etc. This difference was clearly exem- 
plified in the blind man whose sight was restored 
by the Great Physician and the Centurion 
whose servant was healed. In the first instance 
Jesus applied wet clay and required the man to 
go and wash in the pool, while in the other he 
merely spoke the healing word. 

To my mind it is as legitimate to exhibit the 
drug in such cases of mental dullness, or to re- 
sort to any artifice with a view to impressing, as 
it is to administer a stimulant to one in a state of 
physical depression. We can in no case add to 
the potential energy of the patient; we can only 
stir into renewed activity the powers that he al- 
ready possesses. 

It is among the ignorant that we are oftenest 
put to our wits ends to fix upon the most effect- 
ual course. Speak to such a one of esoteric 
power, or even undertake to secure the co-opera- 
tion of his mental energies in the curative effort, 
and the attempt would be regarded as an offense. 
Subterfuge is in such cases a legitimate resource. 

At the same time one who accepts the tenets 
pertaining to mental medicine need not despair 
of ultimate triumph of the truth even among the 
ignorant. But in order to succeed he will have to 
study pedagogy in the hard school of experience. 
The mission of the medical man embraces the 
teaching of a knowledge of both the prevention 
and the cure of disease. 

It must then be understood that the ultimate 
aim in all cases should be to bring one's clientele 



NOT SUITED TO ALL. 133 

to a point of development where curative meas- 
ures will rarely be required. 

This means, surely enough, a curtailment of 
business and a great reduction in the relative num- 
ber of medical practitioners. It means for many 
a dwindling practice and a necessity for change 
of avocation. At the same time it means an 
ushering in of a Millennial Dawn. The idea 
may be Utopian, and yet, from the present trend 
of events, we are justified in looking for a consum- 
mation so devoutly to be desired by humanity. 

Inasmuch as such a result cannot be expected 
in our day, we must face the problem of cure as 
it now presents. All treatment, to effect the 
best purpose, must therefore at present be of a 
mixed type. We require all possible aid from 
the action of laws operating on the physical plane. 

SURGERY AND DRUGS AND MASSAGE AND ELECTRIC- 
ITY AND A HUNDRED OTHER ELEMENTS MUST EN- 
TER INTO OUR METHODS, BUT THEY SHOULD NOT, AS 
IN THE PAST, CONSTITUTE OUR ONLY MEANS OF CURE. 

We should enlist the valuable aid of the forces 
resident on the planes above, which truly in 
great measure give the forces of the physical 
plane their power. 

Above all else, and by means of every measure 
employed, we should endeavor to awaken our 
patients to a realization of the unlimited powers 
residing within themselves. 

Irrational Claims of Certain 
Advocates of Esoteric Methods. 

The most egregious 
error of those who advocate psychic healing is 
found in their fanatical claims of the all- efficiency 
of their measures and their attitude of defiance of 



134 THE QUESTION OF ADOPTION. 

well-recognized rules for sanitary living. They 
often frantically fly in the face of the Almighty 
and question the good effect of many well-deter- 
mined natural laws. 

This is a characteristic of faith not guided by 
reason. The eternal laws never conflict and we 
should seek to work through them and not 
against them. But enthusiasts are apt to be 
carried off their feet by startling truths. "If 
mind is superior to matter," say they, "we 
should ignore the laws which are supposed to 
govern it and thereby bring it into perfect sub- 
jection, " evidently forgetting that we live on 
three planes — the spiritual, the mental and the 
physical. The laws of the superior planes do ex- 
ercise a tremendous influence over the lower plane, 
but the control is not absolute and unequivocal. Each 
plane has its laws and even the admittedly supe- 
rior cannot be said to usurp all authority \ 



SPIRITUAL 



MEN TAL 



PHYSICAL 



Figure 8. The Three Planes of Life. 

Interaction Between 
Mind and Body. 

"It is all a matter of mind, " says 
Eugene Sandow. "If you concentrate your 
mind upon a single muscle or set of muscles for 
three minutes each day and say: 'Do this,' and 
make them respond to contraction, there will be 
immediate noticeable improvement. The whole 
secret of my system lies in the knowledge of hu- 



IS PSYCHO-THERAPY EFFECTUAL? 135 

man anatomy — in knowing just where one is 
weak, and going straight to work bringing that par- 
ticular part up to the standard of one's best feature. 
As a chain is as strong only as its weakest link, 
so is the body as strong only as its weakest 
member. There is nothing that will make a man 
strong save his own concentration of thought. " 

In this same connection I am constrained to 
quote from Prof. James concerning the inter- 
action of mind and body. He says: 
1 ' All mental states, no matter what their character as 
regards utility, should be followed by bodily activity of 
some sort, for all states of mind are motor in consequences. 
The immediate condition of a state of consciousness is an 
activity of some sort in the cerebral hemispheres." 



spiritual 



MENTAL 



"PHYSICAL 
Figure 9. The Planes of Life with Lines of Communication. 

Is Psycho-Therapy Effectual? 

Doctors have fallen into 
a way of casting doubt on the claims made by 
mental healers. * 'Imaginary ailments! " ' ' Wrong 
diagnosis! " * 'Not yet cured! " ' i Self -deceived! " 
' ' Wait and see! " ' 'I knew a case in which they 
failed! " These are some of the greetings that 
we have been accustomed to give to reports of 
alleged cures. Are mental cures never wrought ? 
Do we not know many cases wherein a cure has 
been apparently made ? Are we absolutely sure 
that our methods have been often curative ? 

I mention no particular cult, as I am fully con- 
vinced that the basic principle of cure is the 




136 THE QUESTION OF ADOPTION. 

same among them all though each would deny 
the assertion. 

"All these modes of producing or removing disease 
have so thorough a prima facie resemblance that we may 
be reasonably confident of actual community between 
them in some underlying law of nature." — Prof. Coe. 

As for myself I do not rely upon the testimony 
of others, though much of a reliable nature can 
be cited, but upon my own experience, i can 
but believe what my eyes have seen. Remarkable 
cures are daily wrought by psychic means: of this 
I have no doubt 

"If there ever was a day," says Prof. Coe in his 
"Spiritual Life," "when the evidence thus offered could 
properly be put aside with a sneer at human credulity, 
that day has gone. These things are not done in a cor- 
ner. On every hand we are invited to come and see, 
and any disposition which may be shown to ignore the facts 
thus open to observation, while at the same time wholly con- 
demning the beliefs in the name of which they are wrought, 
leads to a just charge of prejudice and lack of scientific 
method. In fact, the evidence of most remarkable cures of 
healing under all these systems of belief is so abundant that I 
shall not hesitate to assume without argument that we are here 
dealing with one or more genuine curative agencies" 



PART THREE 



THE 

PRACTICE OF MENTAL METHODS 



" To speak with authority from experience — not to 
argue, but to demonstrate — to do, and to be — these are 
'methods' that can be understood by the most skep- 
tical." 



(137) 



Preliminary Observations 



(139) 



%l We have to meet people on many and varied planes of 
development, and we should learn so to accommodate our 
methods to their individual needs that all who apply to us 
for aid may receive the very best that can be given to them 
in their particular environment." 



" Thought is the most potent of all occult forces. When 
utilized in concentrated and persistent effort it becomes 
the world's most dangerous or most beneficial weapon, We 
should beware how we use it." 



Mental therapeutics may be applied (1) by indirect action 
of the unconscious mind through the influence of sanitary 
and cheerful surroundings, (2) by awakening faith in vari- 
ous means which appeal directly to the objective sense, (3) 
by direct action of the objective mind on the subjective 
through the use of reiterated affirmations, and (4) by the 
direct effect of the objective mind of the physician upon 
the subjective mind of the patient."— Leavitt, 



(140) 



CHAPTER I. 

PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 

Thus far in our study of Mental Therapeutics 
I have attempted to establish its value as a 
means of cure by adducing rational evidence in 
its behalf. It now becomes my duty to point 
out the manner of its use best suited to legiti- 
mate practice. 

Thought Runs in 
Customary Grooves. 

Generally speaking, the interpre- 
tation put upon an impression is the customary 
one: it is the interpretation usually made by the 
subjective mind when experiencing an identical 
impression or one which simulates it. If the 
finger be pricked by accident, the pain is inter- 
preted to mean that our hand is in the path of 
harm, and, without conscious thought, we jerk it 
away. Should we deliberately prick the finger, 
there would be experienced a strong impulse to 
withdraw it, and, if self-control be poor, we 
should scarcely be able to hold it still. The 
mind has become so accustomed to certain inter- 
pretations that it is at first reluctant to accept 
new interpretations of the sensation experienced. 
Now repeat the voluntary infliction of pain from 
hour to hour or from day to day and ultimately 
the subjective will acquire so great facility for 
traversing the new channels that self-control will 
become an easy thing. Any one can train him- 

(141) 



142 PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 

self to bear voluntarily inflicted pain without 
flinching. What is more, the painful interpreta- 
tions of stimuli may be brought under such com- 
plete control that the sensation of pain itself can 
be inhibited at will. Like Lord Nelson in the 
battle of Copenhagen, we can learn to turn our 
blind eye to it and say: "I do not see it." 

The mind in most people has been left to put 
upon impressions such interpretations as it may 
choose, or such as early training or race tenden- 
cies may suggest. Awaken a sensation (all 
thought is based upon sensation) in such a one 
and the thought will at once start on its custom- 
ary course. The course may be represented by 
shallow channels, or the mind may have been 
deeply plowed by some startling experience or by 
long use. In any event the channels are there 
and thought will follow them rather than new 
ones. A cry of ' 'fire " will thus set one who has 
at some time, from such a cause, experienced a 
profound sweep of fear through the mind, into 
the greatest agitation. The subjective faculties 
of the horse are so grooved by a runaway that 
no amount of training can ever wholly obliterate 
the lines and enable thought to cut more rational 
channels. 

In the case of a person whose mind has become 
reticulated by unwholesome lines of thought and 
his conduct by consequent physical action, there 
is abundant work for the patient teacher in giv- 
ing direction and inspiration ; and there is far more 
work for the awakened ego in insisting upon 
order and reason in his conscious and unconscious 
mentation. But the reward is sure, for success 
is bound to follow patient and persevering en- 
deavor. 



AFFIRMATION. 



143 



Affirmation the Method 
Conferring: Best Results. 

Let us turn for a moment 
to a consideration of the modus operandi of sug- 
gestive curative effects. 




Figure 10. A Diagrammatic Representation of the Curative Effects of 
Suggestion. 

Let O represent the cerebral center. A is a dead level of the 
accustomed stimulus, whether it be fear, unwholesome environment, 
or spontaneous suggestion. B is the affirmation by means of which, 
through reiteration, we hope to effect a change in the thought; and 
C the unsteady support given the suggestion by conduct, a is the cus- 
tomary channel pursued by thought under the power of stimulus. 
bl, b2 and b3 represent the gradually deflecting lines of thought, 
approaching nearer and nearer to steadiness, resulting from the 
repeated affirmation. Lastly, B4 is the completed and steady result. 

The essential features are recognized as (1) an affirmation or a 
suggestion properly made and (2) the corresponding conduct. 

It is essential that the significance of these be made clear. 

A suggestion, whether given to one's self or to 
another, is commonly in the form of an affirma- 
tion. For example, when treating myself I may 
administer the suggestion in the following words : 
"I am well. " This I repeat time and again with 
a view to impress. Now, if I go about with my 
usual tale of woe, and with pain and anxiety 
depicted in my countenance, it will be evident 
that I am not giving voluntary support to the 
suggestion. 

If, on the contrary, I not only affirm that I am 



144 PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 

well at the time of the treatment, but also at all 
other times, and compel my actions, as far as 
possible, to sustain the affirmation, I am then 
giving full force to the treatment. 

If I am treating another, and, after solemnly 
affirming that the essential features of the ail- 
ment are rapidly subsiding I show by my sub- 
sequent conduct that the affirmation does not 
represent my true conviction, I am not giving 
full value to the treatment. 

It will be seen- that the best effect of such 
treatment can be obtained only by the co-oper- 
ation of both word and action. 

The suggestion is to be taken by the subjective 
faculties as literal truth, and we should in no way 
convey an impression of insincerity. 

At the risk of apparent digression I shall take 
occasion to correct a seeming incongruity that 
may otherwise trouble consistent minds. 

The question is asked: 

"Are you not, by such an affirmation, pro- 
claiming an untruth ? and if so do you seek to 
justify it on the plea of necessity?" 

In answering the first question the value of 
the second is destroyed; for my reply is, that 
there is no untruth in the affirmation. The 
position taken by the suggester is that, since 
physical disturbance in its origin may be said to 
"spring from the plane of the normal uncon- 
sciousness," the disturbance, in its essence, is 
nothing more than mere dis-ease, and, therefore, 
not to be regarded as an entity. 

The subconsciousness is logically exact in its 
deductive processes, and is profoundly intelligent 
in all its action; but it appears to lack inductive 
power. Its premises are supplied either by 



CUE FROM CONDUCT. 145 

environment, by incidental experiences, or by 
the conscious mind. 

Give it the premise and it will do the resL 

The Subjective May Take 
Its Cue from the Conduct. 

Cheerful moods are con- 
ducive to physical health, and may constitute 
the only necessary suggestion. A happy man 
is a well man. This is a rule with few excep- 
tions. Accordingly it is the part of wisdom to 
cultivate a flow of joyful emotions. We all seek 
to do this after our own fashion, but haphazard 
methods are not often either wise or efficient. 

It is here that affirmation can pave the way to 
success. If we will persistently declare, what- 
ever the feeling of the moment, that we really 
are happy, and follow up the affirmation with 
corresponding conduct, we shall surely prevail 
over our morbid emotions. 

The fact that bodily attitudes and cheerful 
behavior tend to awaken corresponding emo- 
tions in the mind is not generally appreciated. 
We may affirm as long as we will, and with as 
great energy as we can command, but if we do 
not fit to ourselves conduct becoming to our 
claims there will be no proper effect. 
"Refuse to express a passion and it dies" is 
an axiom among scientific observers of mento- 
physical phenomena. Refuse to live an affirma- 
tion and it is shorn of power, is equally true. 

Says Prof. James: 
•• If we wish to conquer undesirable emotional ten- 
dencies in ourselves we must assiduously, and in the 
first instance cold-bloodedly, go through the outward 
movements of those contrary dispositions which we prefer 
to cultivate. The reward of persistency will infallibly 



146 PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 



come, in the fading out of the sullenness or depression, 
and the advent of real cheerfulness and kindliness in 
their stead. Smooth the brow, brighten the eye, con- 
tract the dorsal, rather than the ventral, aspect of the 
frame, and speak in a major key, pass the genial com- 
pliment, and your heart must be frigid indeed if it do 
not gradually thaw." 

The patient is encouraged to affirm health and 
strength, but he does not at first dare to affirm 
them in their fullness of present possession, but 
as steadily and surely developing. This leaves a 
loophole through which find entrance many 
excuses for still acting the part of one not freed 
from his old aches and pains, his weaknesses and 
other disabilities. It is like breaking a controlling 
habit, like that of drink, by degrees ; both usually 
end in failure. 

If now, instead of such half-way claims, he 
declares himself well (not actually, but potenti- 
ally) he finds less excuse for the ways of a sick 
man, and, with fitting behavior, becomes well. 

To get prompt and efficient results the patient 
must be encouraged to throw all his zeal and 
fidelity into both affirmation and action. 

Let me now change figure 10 so as to repre- 
sent consistent conduct by a straight line and 
the results of the operating causes by lines show- 
ing greater steadiness, and we have a good 




Figure 11. A Diagrammatic Representation of the Curative Effects of 
Suggestion when Sustained by Consistent Conduct. 






EXAMPLES. 147 



schematic representation of the process of 
psychic healing. 

Examples of Powerful Suggestion. 

I quote two or three 
examples of the effect of suggestion, not because 
they are exceptionally marked nor because the 
cases selected are any better than many wit- 
nessed in my own practice, but because they are 
found in a dignified work on Psychology by a 
Yale professor: 

"Warts have been charmed away by medicines which 
could have had only a mental effect. Dr. Tuke gives 
many cases of patients cured of rheumatism by rubbing 
them with a certain substance declared to possess magic 
power. The material in some cases was metal; in 
others, wood; in still others, wax. He also recites the 
case of a very intelligent officer who had vainly taken 
powerful remedies to cure cramp in the stomach. Then 
' he was told that on the next attack he would be put 
under a medicine which was generally believed to be 
most effective, but which was rarely used.' When the 
cramps came on again, * a powder containing four grains 
of ground biscuit was administered every seven minutes, 
while the greatest anxiety was expressed (^within the 
hearing of the party) lest too much should be given. 
Half-drachm doses of bismuth had never procured the 
same relief in less than three hours* For four succes- 
sive times did the same kind of attack recur, and four 
times was it met by the same remedy, and with like 
success.' 

" A house surgeon in a French hospital experimented 
with one hundred patients, giving them sugared water. 
Then, with a great show of fear, he pretended that he 
had made a mistake and given them an emetic instead 
of the proper medicine. Dr. Tuke says: 'The result 
may easily be anticipated by those who can estimate the 
influence of the imagination. No fewer than eighty — 
four-fifths — were unmistakably sick.' 
" We have a well authenticated case of a butcher who, 
while trying to hang up a heavy piece of meat, slipped 



148 PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 



and was himself caught by the arm upon the hook. 
When he was taken to a surgeon the butcher said he 
was suffering so much that he could not endure the 
removal of his coat; the sleeve must be cut off. When 
this was done it was found that the hook had passed 
through his clothing close to the skin, but had not even 
scratched it." 

There is no longer any doubt in the minds of 
intelligent students of psychic phenomena that 
the imagination is not only a fruitful source of 
physical pain and organic disturbance, but that 
it can also be turned into a most valuable agent 
in the recovery of health. 

The problems to be solved are (1) how to com- 
mand its most efficient aid and (2) to learn its 
true limitations. 






II. 



The Practice of Mental Methods 

(continued) 



(U9) 



We should do the very things that we dislike to do. Why? 
Because of the mental discipline involved. 
We should set ourselves hard tasks and then resolutely 
perform them."— Leavitt. 

Don't worry. Whenever you are tempted to do so, play 
buffoon, or recall the funniest story you know. Bury your 
self in humor ; laugh, assert your will ; shout to your soul, 
4 1 will not worry. ' —Frank C. Haddock. 

I am confident that I can fix my attention to a part until 
I have a sensation in that part."— John Hunter. 



(150) 



CHAPTER II. 

THE PRACTICE OF MENTAL METHODS— Continued. 
THE PRACTICE OF AUTO-SUGGESTION. 

Suggestion is one and the same process under 
all circumstances. It matters not whether the 
suggestion be directed to one's self or to another; 
the principles of application, and the attendant 
phenomena, are substantially the same. 

Very much concerning the effectual use of it 
in the treatment of others has been learned from 
the phenomena attending its use upon self. 

It is not my purpose to discuss in this place 
the theories that have been put forth to account 
for the astonishing effects produced. They are 
explicable to me only on the hypothesis of men- 
tal duality, which, under the proper conditions, 
has shown itself still more clearly in the develop- 
ment of the evidences of secondary personality. 

For our present purpose it is enough to know 
that the phenomena associated with suggestion 
in others, even to the induction of hypnosis, can 
likewise be produced in self. 

It should be understood at the start that the 
same variation in the degrees of susceptibility 
found in practicing suggestion upon others is 
disclosed in attempting to use it upon self. 

There are sensitives and non-sensitives. One 
finds it easy to produce effects upon himself, and 
another finds it exceedingly difficult, or even, for 
the time, impossible. There is this distinguish- 

(151) 



152 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

able difference: the highly- wrought, hypersensi- 
tive, nervous man or woman, whose fancies and 
sensations have been long under the dominion of 
habitual and special environment, finds it impos- 
sible at first to acquire sufficient self-command to 
meet the requirements of auto-suggestion. Such 
a one requires discipline at the hands of another 
in order to develop the necessary mental grip 
which conditions the phenomena in question. 

It will be gathered from this that the power to 
bring one's self under the spell of suggestion is 
true power. Those who have acquired the high- 
est degree of self-control are the very individuals 
who find it the easiest to mold their experiences 
to their liking. Nor is it the weak in mind who 
respond most easily to suggestive treatment by 
others. For this reason it is found peculiarly 
difficult to bring an idiot or an insane person un- 
der power of suggestion. It can be done, how- 
ever, by appeals to the subconscious mind syste- 
matically and discreetly made. Those who be- 
come proficient in the practice of this method of 
cure are always able to demonstrate the truth of 
what I have postulated. One can easily put the 
claim to the test in the laboratory of clinical ex- 
perience. 

In order to acquire the best results in auto- 
suggestion it is essential that we understand 
before we begin what experiences are to be ex- 
pected and the conditions of receptivity involved. 
The mind is taken up with a great variety of 
diverting events. Our environment is continu- 
ally changing, and the ether teems with influ- 
ences which markedly determine and condition 
our experiences. It is evident that we must 
detach ourselves from the immediate influences 



AUTO-SUGGESTION. 153 

which thus surround us and put the mind into a 
state as favorable for reception of the proposed 
suggestions as possible. To do this a quiet hour 
and a quiet place should be chosen. I have 
found the early morning hour preferable, and, 
in order to obtain all possible benefit from 
quietude, have for some years risen at five 
o'clock. Others have found the evening hour, 
just before retiring, or just before going to sleep, 
most convenient and satisfactory. There is 
probably no difference in results traceable to par- 
ticular hours. Selection is to be determined by 
the relative freedom from disturbance that such 
hours may afford. 

Before subjecting one's self to the influence of 
suggestion one ought to have a distinct purpose 
in mind. For what are we about to undertake 
self-treatment? There are many things beside 
disease that suggestion will cure, and there are 
many ills beside those of the physical organism 
from which it can save us. All do not realize 
the great power of this quiet adjuvant over the 
human mind in its various fields of activity. 
Through its aid our mental faculties can be given 
bent and energy most astonishing even to those 
accustomed to such phenomena. 

Now observe, and I say this in all earnestness 
and sincerity, by means of auto-suggestion a 

MAN CAN MAKE OF HIMSELF ALMOST WHAT HE WILL. 

Is he ambitionless and dull ? He can acquire the 
needed fire. Is he harassed by fears? He can 
become courageous. Is he annoyed by disagree- 
able circumstances seemingly beyond his power 
of control? He can either change them or take 
away their nagging proclivities. Is he under the 
power of an evil habit ? He can break it. I term 



154 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

psychic power "the great adjuvant"; for so it 
is. Through its aid one can carry his mental 
and physical powers to their highest possible de- 
gree of development. 

The value of self -training, by means of auto- 
suggestion, to both physician and patient, is my 
excuse for the chapter of which this is a part. 

Having chosen the hour and place best calcu- 
lated to insure quietude, the experimenter should 
assume an attitude of physical ease, and yet one 
not ordinarily assumed for sleep. He may sit or 
lie, as is most convenient. If the recumbent 
posture be assumed he should be particular to so 
condition it that it will not be likely to suggest 
ordinary sleep. For example, those who cannot 
easily sleep on the back should here assume the 
dorsal position. 

Whatever hour be chosen it should be faith- 
fully adhered to. Day after day let that be the 
silent hour. It is well always to sit in the same 
chair. 

Then relax the entire body and take all ten- 
sion off the mind. Go over the several parts in 
their order and resolutely remove all contraction 
from them. Having done this, close the eyes 
and fix the mind on some particular part, prefer- 
ably the brain or the solar plexus. Picture it in 
your imagination and give it a luminous appear- 
ance. Trace its nerve connections, one by one, 
as best you can. 

During this exercise the mind will be disposed 
at times to wander and must be resolutely 
brought back to the point where it jumped the 
track. The physician who has been the best 
student will best succeed in this exercise of men- 
tal concentration. 



AUTO-SUGGESTION. 155 

It is to be remembered that the secret of effect- 
ual suggestion is found in concentration of the 
mind upon whatever it is directed to by the will. 

Having gone thus far you are in a suitable 
state to accept a suggestion. Indeed, you have 
already given the consciousness a short discipline 
in suggestion. 

Do not for a moment forget that you have a 
vast field of unexplored mind— the great uncon- 
scious — and it is this field that you design chiefly 
to cultivate. It is by far the larger part of you, 
and you now seek to communicate to that busy 
ego the character of work most required by that 
part of you which comes into immediate relations 
with sensory environment. In doing this it is 
well, according to the testimony of most observ- 
ers, to speak to it in familiar terms, as to a friend 
and helper; or, if need be, at times as to a serv- 
ant who has been rather derelict; according as 
may seem necessary or advisable. 

In making suggestions, the more energy and 
earnestness put into them the better. At times 
it may even be wise to shout the affirmations, 
while throwing into them all the intensity of your 
nature. More than one man has sworn himself 
out of severe attacks of disease. 

If suffering from pain or illness of any part turn 
on the white light of your focused thought and 
flood the part with it. Do this again and again, 
while you declare your right to health, and order 
the subjective faculties to see at once to its res- 
toration. Think of that part, and every part, as 
in health. Let your imagination show you a 
healthy liver, a sound heart, a perfectly function- 
ing kidney, and so on. If the nervous system 



156 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

be at sixes and sevens, speak the word of health 
and peace to it, time and again. 

In giving yourself such a treatment by sug- 
gestion you have added nothing to your powers — 
you have merely awakened them to renewed 
activity. That is all that can be done by any 
sort of medication. 

DRUGS DO NOT COMMUNICATE ENERGY — THEY 

merely arouse IT. This is the whole law of 
drug action in a sentence. 

Certain teachers of psychology direct us to 
assume the religious attitude and merely open 
ourselves to Divine inflow. Do so, if you prefer, 
but I opine that the method has small advantage. 
The ego itself is an embodiment of Divinity, 
and, as such, is entitled to fall back upon its in- 
herent powers and require the desired action of 
the physical, learn to trust yourself. Self- 
reliance is all important, and it exalts us to the 
very height of our possibilities. "I am captain 
of my soul, " says Henly. 

This is auto-suggestion in its simplest form. 
We practice it in an irregular and inconsiderate 
manner whenever we say: "I can" or "I can't." 

He who, in view of a task to be done, stoutly 
says: "I can and I will," and then sticks to his 
resolution, is clothed with a majesty of power. 

He who says: "I will try, but I fear that 
nothing will avail," may as well surrender at the 
start; he is self -shorn of his strength. 

But there is something beyond what I have 
thus far mentioned, the power of which *for good 
or ill is more pronounced. I allude now to self- 
hypnosis. 

Having observed the conditions just pre- 
scribed for the simpler form of suggestion, and 



AUTO-SUGGESTION. . 157 

having repeatedly practiced the exercises men- 
tioned, one may undertake to put one's self into 
the hypnotic state. 

There has been a flood of falsehood thrown 
about the possibilities of hypnotism for good and 
ill, and unreal dangers have been pointed out in 
connection with its practice. Those who desire 
to test its merits may rest assured that in putting 
themselves into the hypnotic state they do not 
weaken, but, on the contrary, do really strengthen, 
their mental powers. One cannot put one's self 
into hypnotic sleep at all without thereby giving 
evidence of good self-control. 

We all ought to acquire such power over our 
forces as shall make them our willing servants. 
Among people in general we find the senses in 
full dominion. 

Having reached the suggestive stage, in the 
manner before described, one may need but to 
give the suggestion of sleep and hold the thought 
persistently upon it in order to fall into a state 
of hypnosis. 

The action will be aided by looking steadily 
at an object on the ceiling, or at a small object 
suspended in such a way as to put the levator 
muscles of the eyes into a state of tension. On 
this object the eyes should steadily rest until 
drowsiness ensues, and then they may be closed 
and the mind be still held to the thought of sleep. 

It is better to give the suggestions that we seek 
to impress, in an earnest way, before attempting 
to sleep, and among them should be those of 
sleep itself and the duration of it. When this is 
done the ensuing hypnotic sleep will tend to im- 
press the suggestions more deeply on the sub- 



158 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

consciousness. You will awake after sleeping 
the prescribed time. 

At first you may be unable to recognize the 
sleep, and can be sure that it has ensued only by 
consulting your watch. Time has slid by in an 
unaccountable way. You have certainly slept. 
You may be able to determine that there has 
been sleep by the memory of vague images or 
indefinite fancies that have traversed the mind 
and left behind mere lines of passing. Failure 
to have noticed a rap at the door, or the sound 
of a bell, may be further proof. 

Auto-suggestion should be used in a regular 
and systematic manner as long as deemed 
necessary. 

We ought to avail ourselves of its beneficent 
aid through life. 

Let it be used freely and without fear. 

Suggestions are pouring in upon us from an 
infinite variety of sources. We are unconsciously 
accepting many of the most forcible among 
them, and those which apperception finds most 
convenient and assimilable. Shall we allow this 
unregulated process to go on indefinitely in our- 
selves and others? It is an important — a 
momentous — question. How shall we answer it ? 

That we can regulate the processes has passed 
beyond question. 

How to regulate them is the question I am 
here attempting briefly to answer. 

That many will spurn the thought I have no 
doubt ; but I am equally sure that to others it 
will prove a message of joy. 

"We are living in a world of eternal law and order — a 
world of limitless power. If ignorantly or willfully we 
misuse this power, we experience the lack of good, or 



AUTO-SUGGESTION. 159 



perverted good, which is evil; we experience conflict 
and sorrow, and we ally ourselves with all conflicting 
conditions. There is about us beauty, happiness, love, 
abundance; limitless good for us to use — and for us to 
use today — everything to make life a growth of ever 
unfolding joy, if we intelligently direct this (our) energy. 
Every new view we obtain through experience, or inspira- 
tion, points to heights not yet attained, nor even con- 
ceived, but which the soul knows awaits the earnest, 
believing climber. 

" Browning, who studied so deeply into man's nature 
and possibilities, said: « Man is not yet, but is becom- 
ing.' Then in a moment of sublime realization of 
achievement and prophecy he exclaimed: 'I shall 
arrive.'" — M. Woodbury Sawyer. 



'Positive and negative are relative terms. Each thing, each 
person, is negative to all above in pitch, and is positive 
to all below. Each center with less velocity, is negative to 
those centers that, in their own sphere, revolve faster. 
Note the whirlwinds ; when two meet, they become one and 
take a direction which follows the diagonal represented by 
the parallelogram of the two forces. So is it with whirl- 
pools. The one law of nature is that the greater centers of 
like motion swallow the less ; but the lesser, when thus 
enfolded, proportionately changes the direction of the 
greater and lowers its pitch." 



(160) 



III. 



The Practice of Mental Methods 

(continued) 



(161) 



Our unconscious influence is the projection of our uncon- 
scious mind and personality unconsciously over others. 
This acts unconsciously on their unconscious centers, pro- 
ducing effects in character and conduct, recognized in con- 
sciousness. For instance, the entrance of a good man into 
a room where foul language is used will unconsciously 
modify and purify the tone of the whole room. Our minds 
cast shadows of which we are as unconscious as those cast 
by our bodies, but which affect for good or evil all who un- 
consciously pass within their range. This is a matter of 
daily experience, and is common to all, though more notice- 
able with strong personalities."— Schofield. 

The mind is a magnet. At the core of the soul lies our 
attracting power. We get what we expect. We see what 
we look for. Every thought we think images itself in the 
mind and every image that is persistently held in mind is 
bound to materialize. This is the law. I cannot tell why it 
is so, any more than I can tell why from a few seeds sown 
in fertile soil we reap an abundant crop. I only know that 
the law of thought-externalization is as definite and as 
sure in results as are the laws of seed-time and harvest." 

^-Jean Porter Rudd. 



(162) 



CHAPTER III. 

f HE PRACTICE OF MENTAL METHODS— Continued. 
SUGGESTION TO OTHERS. 

Concerning the Healer Himself. 

It was well to begin 
with auto-suggestion, as he who expects to do 
good work for others should be able to do good 
work for himself. 

I have no faith in the artistic taste of a man 
who wishes to decorate my house if I find in his 
own home a most execrable display of artistic 
ability. He may be a good workman with the 
brush, but he has not the comprehensive grasp 
of general artistic concepts that is required prop- 
erly to choose, to harmonize and to distribute 
values. 

It is equally true that I have no confidence in 
the ability of a man to build me up along right 
lines and to round me out into full mental and 
physical proportions whose mind is in evident 
disorder and whose body is under the power of 
disease. I should certainly say: " Physician 
heal thyself." 

The physician and the surgeon, of all men, 
should be free from mental, moral and physical 
taints. 

Accordingly, he will have abundant occasion 
to practice upon himself; and he ought to devote 
his energies to putting himself into a state of 
mental, moral and physical health before resort- 
ing to a use of the delicate, yet tremendous, 

(163) 



164 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

forces of mind for the alleviation of others' woes. 

It may be only a vagary, but I conceive that 
the true healer communicates a certain degree of 
himself to his patient and that he finds a patient 
who long remains under his care disclosing some 
of his own mental and moral characteristics. I 
do not aver the truth of this, but I have seen 
what appear to be clinical evidences upon which 
to base such an opinion. 

Do not think that I am dwelling at undue 
length on what may appear to some like unes- 
sential phases of suggestion. The feeling that 
a true healer must be a whole man is consist- 
ent. 

He should not be under the power of evil 
habits; he should not be a scoffer at good things; 
he should not be an habitue of disreputable 
resorts; and he should not carry in his atmos- 
phere anything that will impress a sensitive per- 
son unfavorably. 

On the contrary, he should be self-controlled 
and in every way poised. This is the healer, 
and there is no other, who can be trusted to ad- 
minister suggestions to an open and confiding 
mind. 

Reflex Benefits. 

The healer who gives suggestive 
treatment cannot escape thinking the thoughts 
he expresses and sharing the benefits he affirms 
for his patient. In this way he becomes a par- 
taker of the good things that he would bring to 
others. Action and reaction are equal. The 
reflex from an action, a wish or a suggestion is 
sure. 
Thus it will be seen that he who solemnly 



PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT. 165 

avers to his patient that the unseen forces are 
beneficent; that they can be relied upon to bring 
us those things that we crave in the line of our 
requirements; that disease has no proper place 
in the economy of nature; that we are what we 
think we are ; and that we can make of ourselves 
what we really will, is building up his own faith 
and acquiring a more stable foundation for him- 
self, at the same time that he, by his optimistic 
suggestion, is steadying another to a better situ- 
ation and establishing for him a happier mental 
and physical state. 

Practice Makes Perfect. 

In order to acquire a facility 
of suggestion it is well to pursue a course such 
as would be undertaken to acquire facility in any 
other art. The young orator takes for auditors 
an empty row of benches, the dumb brutes of 
the stable or the Spirits of the Deep, and seeks 
to impress these attentive listeners with his 
strains of eloquence. 

Facility gives confidence. When we know 
well our part there is no undue fear, and likewise 
when we have learned well our role we are bet- 
ter prepared to throw into it the essential spirit. 
Accordingly, he who would succeed from the 
start with his attempt at suggestion should prac- 
tice upon imaginary patients ; or, what is far bet- 
ter, he should go through the details of treating 
some of his real patients, alone, with dignity and 
zeal, before he undertakes to do so in their 
presence. 

I enter thus explicitly into the subject because 
there are many to whom the whole matter is 
comparatively new. 



166 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 



The Essentials of Suc- 
cess in the Suggester. 

Success in the practice of sug- 
gestion means such a use of psycho-therapeutics 
as shall effect the purpose for which it is intended. 
To acquire it presupposes in the operator certain 
qualities of mind and certain characteristics of 
personal demeanor, to some of which I shall now 
advert. 

Mental medicine is coming to the front and 
will ultimately be the most trusted mode of 
treatment. For this reason, as well as many 
others, the demand should be for practitioners of 
a high type of manhood and womanhood 

In the early days of homeopathy the practice 
of that system of medicine was adopted by un- 
educated men and women who thought the sum 
and substance of medicine was to be found in a 
tolerable acquaintance with the characteristic 
symptoms of a few remedies and the possession 
of a small case of "potencies." Homeopathy 
outgrew its short clothes, and psychological med- 
icine will do the same thing. It is to be hoped that 
the latter will be absorbed into general medicine, 
in which it will be accorded the chief place of 
honor. 

The suggester should never forget that his 
hope of success lies first in making a personal 
impression. With this thought in mind he will 
be reserved — i. e. , not overtalkative, and disposed 
to keep his patients "at arms' length." Famil- 
iarity breeds contempt and robs one of psychic 
power. 

His personal appearance should in some way 
distinguish him from "the common herd." If 
there be nothing marked in form or face, he 



ESSENTIALS OF SUCCESS. 167 

may be pardoned for assuming an appearance 
that shall distinguish him in a miscellaneous 
company. 

His methods of promotion should also be 
characterized by originality and a something 
which shall cause the public to hold him as sui 
generis, a distinctly differentiated member of the 
human family. 

One thing deserving special mention is that, 
since in the practice of suggestion one is ex- 
pected to acquire a deep insight into person- 
ality, the practitioner should seek to bear all his 
patients, with their mental characteristics, in 
memory. The deepened effect on patients is 
well worth the extra effort involved in doing so. 

A personal interest ought to be taken in each 
patient, and a true friendship will commonly 
result between the healer and one whose mental- 
ity has been deeply impressed by his wholesome 
thought. 

Now listen attentively to this, for it is worthy 
to be pondered : / have a conviction that the 
broad entrance into practice of the psychic idea 
will have a powerful tendency to raise the moral 
status of those who practice it. 

Having read what immediately precedes, the 
reader should not pass over the following. It 
may be said that truth does not need to study 
methods with so great care and to resort to 
small tactics in order to make an impression. 
It would not need to were the masses whom we 
are called to attend better acquainted with the 
determining factors in mental and physical ex- 
perience. 

The truth is that many educated people are 
densely ignorant of the relation existing between 



168 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

mental and physical phenomena. The veriest 
pretender in medicine, even he who makes the 
alleged cure of disease a mere commercial enter- 
prise, and whose bold claims remove him from 
the arena of ethics, finds many in high places 
his ready dupes, and sometimes his stanchest 




Figure 12. A Diagrammatic Representation of the Relative Effects of 
Medicinal and Suggestive Treatment. 

friends. For this reason I say, in order to reach 
and impress, the practitioner, and particularly he 
who makes suggestion his principal reliance, is 
justified in resorting to factitious methods in 
order to catch the eye of the struggling masses. 
It should be understood, however, that the justi- 
fication is found not in the personal emoluments 
that may ensue, but in the vast good which the 
newer methods are capable of conferring on 
suffering humanity, who, but for being drawn 
out by artificial methods, might suffer on and 
ultimately perish. 

The uplifting effect of psychic medicine is the 
bright promise of the day. 

Personal Magnetism. 

"He has no magnetism," is 
said of one, and, * ' He has a wonderful magnetic 
power, " is said of another. What do these 
observations signify ? Is there such an element 



PERSONAL MAGNETISM. 169 

entering into the creation of what we term 
success ? 

What we characterize as Personal Magnetism 
cannot spring from good looks, from fine appear- 
ance, from gentlemanly demeanor, nor from 
interested attention, though it cannot be denied 
that these enter as constituents into the summa 
summarum of the seemingly inexplicable thing 
that so impresses all. 

That a power to impress is evinced in some, 
and an entire lack of it is observed in others, 
there can be no mistaking. One man possesses 
power over others, and another possesses none. 
We look on and say: "What does it mean?" 

The power of personal magnetism is so gentle, 
and yet so effective, that the person controlled 
knows nothing of the process; he believes him- 
self acting from spontaneous motives and im- 
pulses, and yet he does the very things that the 
impelling mind of another dictates. 

The chief secret of this so-called Personal 
Magnetism lies in the positive and consistent 
nature of its possessor. In some it is inborn and 
characterizes them from childhood. But it can 
be developed in all. You ask me how? I could 
give a series of exercises, which, faithfully fol- 

C lowed, would make the weakest and most unim- 
pressive strongly magnetic. But this is not the 
time and place to do so. Suffice it to say that 
the general principles of culture best calculated 
to develop personal magnetism lies in the direc- 
tion of self- discipline with associated auto-sug- 
gestion. This means a consentaneous develop- 
ment of will-power through the setting of hard 
tasks and the faithful performance of them. 
The men who have moved the world are those 



170 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

who have first brought themselves to a point where 
nothing was rated too hard as a condition of suc- 
cess. They have always been those in whom 
habit was the servant rather than the master. 
They could forego personal ease and pleasure in 
order to win a coveted prize, and count the 
involved self-denial a delight. They have always 
been those who could marshal their forces, could 
concentrate their energies, could focus their 
thought, with the accuracy, the energy and the 
pointedness of a Yogi. They were men of pur- 
pose, and so must we be to acquire power. 

Let me give some of the most important prin- 
ciples lying at the root of personal command over 
others. 

1. Have a purpose in all that you do. Do not 
waste your energies on meaningless thoughts, 
words and actions. 

This does not mean that you should never 
enter into the frivolities of life. It only means 
that you should ' 'work while you work and play 
while you play." 

2. Do nothing without conscious thought. Do 
not so much as touch a patient without thought. 
When examining, when treating, when operat- 
ing, let the thought be: "You are under my 
restorative power." "I can see your troubles." 
"I can cure your ailments." "I am doing this 
for your good." "I expect to make you well," 
etc. 

3. Do not be found inattentive, no matter what 
you have in hand. Do not allow yourself to fall 
into a reverie, save on proper occasions. At all 
other times have your conscious mind on the 
thing in hand, even though it be nothing more 
than eating. 



PERSONAL MAGNETISM. 171 

This will be found an exceedingly hard task. 
The mind will wander and the more it follows its 
own bent the less obedient will it prove on right- 
ful occasions. Therefore keep it well in hand. 
It should be a servant and not a master of the 
true Ego. 

4. Be strong and of good courage. Suggest to 
yourself many times a day: 

' ^1 can and I will. " 

"lam my own master.'' 

* ' / can compel events. " 

"I am a true healer." 

* ' The power to awaken curative energy is in 
me, and I can use it on occasion." 

Not only think it, but speak it aloud to 
yourself. If at any time you feel peculiarly weak 
and irresolute, clinch your fist and stamp your 
foot while you put all the earnestness into the 
sentiment at your command. 

5. Always evince confidence in yourself . It is 
not enough that you feel it. Show it. Let 
every word and every act disclose self-reliance. 

Egotism is despicable wherever seen. That is 
quite another thing. Self-reliance impresses. 

" Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that 
iron string." 

Read what has been said elsewhere concerning 
faith. Faith is self-reliance; and it is something 
more: it is assurance of results. 

"Faith, absolute, dogmatic faith, is the only 
condition of true success." 

6. Sincerity contributes much to personal mag- 
netism. Without it we cannot grandly achieve. 
"Be sincere, but don't be serious. The man 
whom nature has appointed to do great things 
is, first of all, furnished with that openness of 



172 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

nature which renders him incapable of being 
insincere. ' ' — Carlyle. 

The way to all this is through dogged determi- 
nation, reinforced, emphasized, made real, by fre- 
quent auto-suggestion. 

It will be recalled in this connection that auto- 
suggestion is most effective when given in silence. 

"Let us be silent, for so are the gods." Thus 
runs an ancient sentiment. 

The Foregoing Neither Unim- 
portant Nor Too Elementary. 

For some the foregoing 
may seem better suited to students than to 
physicians of years and experience. It may be 
so, but I venture to say that the earnest searcher 
after truth will not so regard it, even though it 
expresses nothing not already familiar to him. 

Do not forget that to speak truisms often 
serves a good purpose. 

It is hoped that these principles will be studied 
until they become indelibly impressed on the 
memory and will be practiced until they become 
ingrained into every-day life. 



IV 



The Practice of Mental Methods 

(continued) 



(173) 



"These phenomena (of hypnotism) do not indicate a diseased 
condition which ought to be feared or suppressed, but 
should be looked upon as gateways to a higher knowledge, 
and therefore worthy of investigation and certain to re- 
ward it."— Edward T. Bennett, P. R. S. 



'The problem of health, then, rests primarily on the regula- 
tion of mental action. Illness is always a sign of weakness, 
and, primarily, mental weakness. I have no wish to deny 
that unconscious action may be modified for good by the 
toxical action of drugs. It is undoubtedly through such 
action that curative effects are often produced. The irri- 
tant drug communicates a suggestion of augmented energy 
in certain areas, and organs, and nerve tracts, which effects 
desired results. That drug treatment does often effect 
cures in this manner cannot be denied. But drugs are un- 
certain in action and cannot be relied upon in a series of 
cases, without at the same time, by virtue of collateral 
irritation, doing possible harm. The great defect of the 
drug system is found in its unreliability. Uniform effects 
cannot be obtained. The advantage of mental treatment 
lies in the fact that it can be directed with precision, while 
its effects are not scattering and collaterally harmful. It 
can also be made to reinforce drug action and thus render 
it efficient. Moreover (and this truth should sink deeply 
into the memory ) , while in using drugs as a means of modify- 
ing functional activities we are teaching reliance on arti- 
ficial stimulation. In mental therapeutics the mind learns 
to acquire permanent control in its own realm."— Leavitt. 



"Thought in the mind hath made us. What we are 
By thought was wrought and built. If a man's mind 
Hath evil thoughts, pain comes on him as comes 
The wheel on ox behind. 

All that we are is what we have thought and willed ; 
Our thoughts shape us and frame. If,one endure 
In purity of thought, joy follows him 
As his own shadow— sure." 

—Sir Edwin Arnold. 



(174) 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE PRACTICE OF MENTAL METHODS— Continued. 

How to Secure the Essentials 
of Success in the Patient. 

Having reviewed at 
some length the methods of establishing in the 
physician the conditions of effective suggestion, 
we shall turn our attention to those equally im- 
portant in the patient, and indicate as far as 
possible the means of securing them. 

I have elsewhere dwelt upon faith as the most 
essential element in the giving and receiving of 
therapeutic suggestion, and it will be unneces- 
sary for me to do more than mention it here. 

The means of awakening faith have also been 
considered, and they will not be recapitulated. 

Importance of Attention. 

Nothing is more important 
than to gain the attention of the patient about to 
be treated. I do not say that it is all-important, 
inasmuch as the subjective mind may be im- 
pressed while the objective consciousness is 
turned to other things. But the desired effect is 
facilitated by capturing and holding the patient's 
conscious attention. 

Very nervous patients are easily diverted, 
especially by their sensations, and find it diffi- 
cult, or even impossible, volitionally to concen- 
trate on anything. At the same time many of 
them are suffering the effects of involuntary con- 
centration. 

(175) 



176 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 



While treating a nervous patient a few days 
ago I found her getting more and more agitated, 
until I feared that inco-ordinate action would 
throw her from the chair. She finally ejaculated 
an allusion to the condition, and I explained 
that she was failing to follow the thought I was 
laboriously trying to give her. She had been 
contemplating the very conditions that I wanted 
her to forget. 

' 'Listen now," I said. "You are not follow- 
ing my thought. Think of what I am saying 
and your jerking will cease." 

On proceeding with the treatment she speedily 
quieted, and the suggestions were evidently en- 
abled to take a better hold. 

"I am getting better, " she said at the con- 
clusion, and a brighter face and renewed anima- 
tion betokened what her lips expressed. 

The subjective mind is supposed to note every 
word and act with most scrupulous care and to 
preserve it in the memory. 

"Since it is the subjective faculty that works 
the cure," says one, "why need we be con- 
cerned regarding the objective thought?" 

It is quite true that the subjective conscious- 
ness is chiefly involved in every cure; but we 
may reasonably infer that beneficial results are 
facilitated by recurrence of the consciousness, 
again and again, to the suggestion that has 
found lodgment in its registers. 

Whatever the tenable theory, observation 
teaches the value, though not the absolute 
necessity, of securing the objective attention. 

Media of Cure. 

I have spoken of faith as an essential 



MEDIA OF CURE. 177 

element of cure, in both physician and patient. 
In many people, more particularly the unedu- 
cated and thoughtless, faith requires a medium, 
or object, on which to rest. When Jesus healed 
the blind man he moistened clay with saliva and 
put it on the man's eyes, after which he bade 
him go and wash. Why did he thus ? Doubt- 
less because his power was conditioned by the 
man's ignorance. To have merely spoken the 
healing word would have been insufficient. The 
patient needed to feel the action of the remedy, 
as many patients now need to taste the drug, in 
order that his faith might rise to healing pitch. 
It was quite different, as I have said, with the 
educated Centurion, who asked Jesus to ' 'speak 
the word only," under the assurance that his 
servant, though absent, would be healed. 

It follows that we must discriminate between 
patients. There are many who can easily accept 
a propounded hypothesis which appeals to their 
reason, and in treating such, for simple ailments, 
no drugs are needed. But, when disease has 
obtained a firm root, and especially when it pre- 
sents threatening aspects ', we should omit no 
rational remedy that appears to be suited to the 
case. 

Well chosen drug remedies have curative power 
over the human organism and in most cases ought 
to be exhibited. 

HYPNOSIS. 

We are now brought to a consideration of the 
condition of the patient most conducive to effec- 
tive suggestion, originally termed Mesmeric 
Sleep, but later called by Baird Hypnosis. 

There may be an essential difference between 



itS THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

mesmerism and hypnotism and yet few recent 
observers declare their ability to discern it. In 
the practice of mesmerism, contact with the 
patient's body is essential, while in the practice 
of hypnotism there may be contact or there 
may not. In any case I am convinced that the 
phenomena represent the effects of suggestion 
and accordingly we shall here consider them as 
identical 

Methods of Inducing Hypnosis. 

Every healer who 
employs hypnotism has his own way of inducing 
the state. There is little emphasis to be put 
upon methods. In any case the object should 
be to convince the patient that a state of sleep 
is to ensue, and then, by suggestion, to take him 
through the stages of drowsiness and somnolence 
into deep sleep. 

Charcot, the great French savant, who de- 
voted much study to the phenomena of hypno- 
tism, classified its phases into three groups, 
indicating, as he supposed, three degrees of 
hypnosis. A few years ago, at Old Salpetriere 
in Paris, Charcot, Jr. , demonstrated to me these 
three stages in a private seance. But the symp- 
toms of these various stages are themselves 
dependent on suggestion for their distinct de- 
velopment, in a new subject, and, in practice, 
the classification need not be regarded. 

Most intelligent people are susceptible to hyp- 
notic influence when properly exercised by those 
who are en rapport with them. One may not 
succeed to his liking in inducing the state, in a 
particular instance, at the first attempt; but, with 



SUGGESTION IN ORDINARY SLEEP. 179 

wise persistence and intensification of the ocular 
fatigue, there will rarely be a total failure. 

Modern practice has demonstrated that all 
people, at all times y are measurably susceptible to 
suggestion; that in silence and reverie they are 
far more so; and that they are most susceptible of 
ally in the state of deep hypnosis. 

Suggestion in Ordinary Sleep. 

It has also been clearly 
shown that hypnotic sleep is not essentially dif- 
ferent from ordinary sleep. In the latter, one is 
in relation. to one's own unguided subconscious 
mentation, while in the former one is in relation 
to the mind of the operator. 

It has been found that susceptible subjects, 
especially children, may sometimes be transferred 
mentally, during natural sleep, from the self- 
centered state into distinct relationship with the 
hypnotizer, followed by the development of ordi- 
nary hypnotic phenomena. 

It has also been found that ordinary sleep need 
not be converted into hypnotic sleep in order to 
obtain a marked degree of suggestive effect. By 
beginning in a quiet way, so as not to awaken 
the sleeper, the suggestions can be offered with 
evident after-effect. 

Suggestion Under Anesthesia, 

I do not know who first 
demonstrated the possibility of suggestive effect 
on anesthetized patients. I have practiced it for 
years and with undoubted results. 

The topic will be pursued at some length in 
the section on Surgery, to which the reader is 
referred. 



180 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 



Suggestion During 
Hysterical Storms. 

A most favorable time also for 
effective suggestion is during the pseudo-uncon- 
sciousness of an hysterical seizure when the 
patient appears to her friends to be oblivious to 
all about her. At such a time the objective 
faculties are partially inhibited, but the subject- 
ive mind is peculiarly acute and able to accept a 
rational premise for more sensible and orderly 
behavior. That is a time when the patient will 
bear a strong impress and there need be no fear 
to use emphatic measures to secure it. 

How to Induce Hypnosis. 

Certain patients are so sus- 
ceptible that no particular mode of procedure 
becomes essential. It may be enough to close 
the eyes, make a few passes with the hand and 
speak the emphatic word, " Sleep"! 

But, as we cannot often reckon on obtaining 
results with so great ease, it is better to follow a 
routine method at the start. After a patient has 
been put to sleep a few times and the suggestion 
of easy control has been made, it will be found 
unnecessary to follow rigid rules. 

There is no doubt that the operator acquires 
confidence and facility by experience. The 
oftener one sets his will against another and tri- 
umphs, the easier success becomes. 

I have seen Voisin put some of his patients to 
sleep by directing them to gaze steadily at a 
bright ball suspended about two feet from the 
eyes and in such a situation as to tire the supe- 
rior ocular muscles; I have seen him stroke 
others to sleep; and I have seen him hypnotize 



THE PHENOMENA OF HYPNOTISM. 18\ 

an insane woman by merely laying his hands 
over her ears and pressing her face close to his, 
with a steady look. 

There is no best method, and the operator will 
be guided by his own experience and the impulse 
of the moment. The most obdurate can some- 
times be subdued by employing revolving mir- 
rors; but these cannot well be used in office prac- 
tice. I have succeeded in some cases by using 
heavy prismatic lenses that confuse and tire. 
Other methods — original, as I believe — are use of 
the graphophone for suggestion ; and the inhala- 
tion of ordinary air slightly charged with an odor, 
through a tube connected with a phantom, or with 
an empty tank. 

It is all suggestion and the aim should be to 
catch and hold the attention to the thought of 
sleep. It is not possible to hypnotize a subject 
to the point of sleep without, in some way, giving 
the suggestion of sleep. 

Failure grows out of inability to overcome the 
objective mental activity. 

A modified degree of hypnosis can often be 
obtained by startling effects ; but the condition is 
not so favorable for curative purposes. They are 
mostly hysterical patients who can be thrown into 
hypnosis in this manner. Such subjects may 
resist all other methods. After having been sub- 
dued a few times, obstinate patients, like frac- 
tious horses, become thoroughly tractable. 

The simplest methods are usually the best. 

The Phenomena of Hypnotism. 

Let the operator re- 
member that it is quite possible to put the 
average patient into an hypnotic state the symp- 



182 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

toms of which are largely determined by the 
suggestions of the operator, or in the absence of 
these by the preconceived notions of the subject 
himself. It is for this reason that a satisfactory 
classification of hypnotic symptoms cannot easily 
be made. 

The loss of voluntary motion is the simplest 
phase of hypnosis observed after passing into a 
state bordering on sleep. You close the patient's 
eyes and then abruptly say: 

' * Ah, you are already asleep. Your eyes are 
heavy, so heavy that you cannot open them. 
Try as hard as you like, but you cannot open 
them. Now, I lay your hand on mine and you 
cannot remove it. See, it sticks like steel to a 
magnet. But I have only to speak the word 
and you are released. Open your eyes. See ? 
They open easily. Take away your hand. Yes, 
you readily remove it. You do exactly what I 
tell you to do. You can't do otherwise — the 
fact is you do not care to disobey. It is far 
easier and pleasanter to obey." 

This experience impresses the patient with a 
sense of necessity, and, so long as you do not 
ask anything unreasonable, or that does not 
comport with his sense of right, he will not think 
of disobeying. A vicious man will do vicious 
acts under orders; but a conscientious man will not. 

Your patient may have had much pain. Lay 
your hand on the painful spot and say: 

"You have no more pain. The cause of it 
has been removed, and you are free. You are 
well y absolutely well" 

Repeat this in similar words several times. 
Say it loudly ; then whisper it into the ear. The 
suggestion is to be deeply impressed. 



POSITION FOR HYPNOSIS. 183 

This is a favorable degree of hypnosis for sug- 
gestion; but it is not equal to that of deep sleep. 

To carry the patient into the profound stage 
merely use suggestion. If in an office chair, put 
him into a semi-recumbent posture and suggest 
deep sleep. 

These words will answer the purpose: "You 
are now fast asleep. Nothing can awaken you 
but my command. You are wholly oblivious to 
all but my words. Listen, now, while I speak." 

The patient will nearly always do precisely 
what you command, and will appear to be in 
deep sleep — sometimes with the accompanying 
deep and regular breathing. Nothing will dis- 
turb him until you give the waking word, pro- 
vided you remain with him, and provided, also, 
that you do not insist upon something against 
which his moral or spiritual nature would rebel. 

It is easy to put one patient into a particular 
stage of hypnosis with mixed phenomena, while 
another will not enter it at all, though he will 
readily enter other stages, until experimented 
with a number of times. Idiosyncrasies show up 
very plainly in hypnosis. 

Position for Hypnosis. 

One characteristic of the hyp- 
notic sleep worthy of early notice is that the 
patient, being in constant subjective relation 
with the operator, does not appear to wholly 
forget physical relations. In this respect the 
condition resembles certain phases of hysteria 
wherein the patient, .during (to lay observers) an 
alarming attack of apparent unconsciousness, 
from which she long refuses to be aroused, sits 
bolt upright, co-ordination being sufficiently 



184 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

maintained to keep her from falling. Likewise, 
the hypnotic patient does not relax, as in ordi- 
nary sleep, but the muscles are sometimes, but 
not always, rigid until softened by suggestion. 

For this reason the question of position is com- 
paratively immaterial. If the physician be treat- 
ing at his office, the patient may be seated in his 
adjustable chair, and for the purpose of deep 
hypnosis is made to assume an easy semi-recum- 
bent posture. (See half-tone.) For light hyp- 
nosis it is more convenient to seat him in an 
ordinary chair so that the operator may occupy 
a convenient position behind him. 

When one is not practicing hypnotism in a 
wholesale way, as I have seen it done abroad, 
there is no occasion for all the machinery of 
bright balls, revolving mirrors, etc. The simpler 
methods and the quiet, easy positions are to be 
preferred, as they are more likely to please 
people of intelligence and secure from them the 
greater confidence. 

The more the patient comes to believe in the 
power of the healer, rather than in the means 
employed, the more satisfactory the results. 
But I caution the operator again in behalf of 
truth and the beneficent results likely to follow the 
apprehension of it, to aim ultimately to bring the 
patient to understand that the true curative 
power lies in himself, and that all the physician 
can do is to arouse it, by various means, into 
renewed activity. 

The most efficient measures of cure are always 
simple. The chief effort is always to be directed 
toward establishing the necessary confidence of 
the patient in the means employed, in the physi- 
cian, but most of all in himself. 



SCOPE OF HYPNOTIC CONTROL. 185 

The Scope of Hypnotic Control. 

As in the instance of 
other manifestations of nature's hidden forces, 
the fancies of those unacquainted with the phe- 
nomena in their details are disposed to run riot. 
The true power of the hypnotist has been misap- 
prehended and the effects of hypnotism on the 
subject have been misinterpreted and exag- 
gerated. 

The will of the hypnotized person is not under 
the power of the operator. Let those who think 
it is experiment on a subject or two and they 
will become convinced that one cannot be so con- 
trolled, either in hypnosis or out of it, as to com- 
mit an act to which his volition had not already 
given tacit consent. The truth is that our moral 
principles and impulses lie mainly beneath the 
floor of consciousness and when one is pressed to 
do what does not accord therewith there is an 
emergence of the true nature and one comes to 
one's waking sense and then the resistance is 
determined by the ordinary processes of induc- 
tive reasoning. Press the hypnotized patient to 
do some grotesque or immoral act too far and he 
will waken. There is revolt. 

Now this return of a hypnotized subject to 
normal conditions, against the purpose of the 
operator, does not prove, as some have sup- 
posed, that hypnosis is really an objectively con- 
scious state in which he comprehends his true 
environment. Would they take this position 
with respect to normal sleep ? During the latter 
we are not objectively conscious of what is going 
on around us, and, in our dreams, we accept 
most absurd situations without protest. The 
stealthy burglar may be prowling about and we 



186 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

know nothing of his presence, until something 
occurs sufficiently out of the ordinary to cause 
our sleepy consciousness to assert itself. The 
mind in sleep readily adjusts its actions to envir- 
onment, not only present environment, but 
prospective as well. Go to bed in a sleeper be- 
fore it leaves the station and very likely you will 
not be awakened by departure of the train, 
though one-half the noise and motion would have 
started you in fright from your own bed at home. 
The hypnotized subject gives himself up to be 
dominated by certain ideas and an attempt to 
lead him beyond that point of concession will 
result in waking him. 

As much may also be said concerning post- 
hypnotic suggestion. It has its bounds set up 
by the subject's own ideas of consistency and 
decency. 

Has Hypnotism a Pernicious Ef= 
feet on the Subject's Mentality? 

The testimony of all 
practitioners of experience is that no ill effects 
have been observed. Among those who thus 
testify I have elsewhere mentioned Forel, Lie- 
beault, Bernheim, Wetterstrand, Van Eeden, De 
Jong and Moll. 

The Hypnotic Suggestion. 

The hypnotic suggestion 
differs in no essential from other suggestion. In 
giving it one should remember that subconscious 
mentation is surprisingly logical, and that the 
suggestion itself, when presented, should have 
logical order and be a fair inference from what 
has preceded it. What has been termed apper- 



THE HYPNOTIC SUGGESTION. 187 

ception does not pertain alone to the objective 
mind. The subconsciousness, on receiving knowl- 
edge, immediately sets to work to associate it 
with ideas already possessed and prepare it for 
subsequent use. There is a process of reasoning 
set up, perhaps, as would appear, not of an in- 
ductive nature, the result of which is felt upon 
the sum total of life's action. 

It follows from this that the more rational the 
suggestion the more likely it is to have the 
designed effect. Our conclusions are usually 
arrived at from either a conscious, or an uncon- 
scious, process of reasoning. Even many of our 
so-called intuitions have a solid foundation on 
subconscious mental action, though to us they 
seem spontaneous. 

In suggesting, then, endeavor to follow some 
rational order. 

In affirming health give the rationale of the 
assumption. 

Trace the beginnings of disease back to faulty 
subconscious mental action, and explain that, in 
both the hypnotic and the post-hypnotic state, 
mind is dominant. 

Show how quickly pain leaves on asserting its 
absence. 

Explain the law of faith and the certain action 
of it in the relief of ailments. 

All vital action is determined by law and to 
work with law is to cure our ills. 

Show how the curative action of remedies can 
be impeded or aided by our attitudes of mind. 

All this is rational, and will be accepted as 
such by the patient. 

Put the suggestions into the tersest and clear- 
est language lest they be misunderstood, and 



188 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

repeat them again and again, so that memory of 
sounds may aid in impressing the ideas. 

A suggestion that runs along the lines of pre- 
conceived notions is more easily accepted, 
and, for this reason, the healer using it should 
endeavor to acquaint himself with the mental 
grasp and peculiarities of his patients. To the 
religious, there must at first be nothing to un- 
settle long-established beliefs. Seek to suit the 
suggestion to the case if you would best succeed. 
It would be futile to present theories of God's 
love and care to an atheist, just as it would be 
unwise to dilate on the action of remedies to one 
strongly prejudiced against them. To be sure 
the mind may be gradually changed in its con- 
victions by a series of treatments, especially if 
the patient be clever and the arguments well 
put; but my reference has been chiefly to im- 
mediate effects. 

Perhaps the point is well enough made by 
saying that much knowledge and discretion are 
required to carry out effective suggestive treat- 
ment. 

Awakening the Patient 

A good deal of silly talk has 
been made over the alleged difficulty of awaken- 
ing certain subjects. 

The truth is that the operator need never fear 
such a complication. Most subjects, left to 
themselves for only a few minutes, will waken, 
unless a positive order to do otherwise be issued. 
There may be an occasional hysterical patient 
who will refuse to respond at once to the waking 
order; but even she need occasion no anxiety. 

It is well to give a suggestion concerning the 



Effect depends on operator. 189 

duration of sleep and the mode of waking from 
it in the early part of the treatment. Tell him 
that he will remain asleep, no matter what may 
occur, until he receive the waking command from 
you. "You will waken when I blow on your 
eyes, " is a good form of suggestion. 

Always follow the same method of arousing 
the patient and he will be unable to remain 
asleep after receiving the usual signal. 

Some patients cannot bear to be aroused sud- 
denly. The effect appears to be much like that 
produced by a sudden start from natural sleep. 
Those thus aroused may complain of an un- 
pleasant dizziness. Say to the subject: 

' ( Now I am going to awaken you. I shall 
blow on your eyes, and then you will slowly re- 
turn to the wideawake state, feeling fine. Now 
we are ready. (He blows on the closed eyes.) 
See, you are' coming back. All things have 
changed and you are feeling, oh, so well. " 

There will at first be small movements. Then 
the eyes will open, at first with a curious ex- 
pression as though a bit surprised at the environ- 
ment, and at last the condition will become 
normal. The phenomena are much those 
attending an awakening from ordinary sleep. 

The Effect Depends Largely on 
the Operator and His Methods. 

The methods must be 
suited to the cases. All cannot be treated alike 
if we would get the best results. Brusqueness is 
well suited to certain people; with a few one 
cannot succeed without it. But in general it is 
far better to employ gentleness and kindness. 



190 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

The Aim Should 
Be to Educate, 

The practitioner should never lose 
sight of the thought that to cure a patient means 
to educate him. Education means learning how 
to think. One who is suffering from physical 
disturbances is disclosing the effects of wrong 
thinking. He may be conscious of none but the 
most approved thoughts, for the damaging con- 
cepts are commonly unconscious thoughts. The 
subjective has hold of a wrong premise, and is 
following the reasoning to a logical conclusion. 
There is where the trouble comes in. 

By means of hypnotism we are enabled to 
reach the subjective consciousness most effec- 
tively, and, from time to time, we make an 
impression upon it. A single treatment does 
not often avail. It may set things right for the 
moment, but the vicious action has been so long 
established that there is no speedy reversing 
of it. Correction must be made time and again, 
and new premises must be gradually built, until, 
at last, even inherited, as well as acquired, ten- 
dencies to wrong action are wholly overcome. 

The Salient Features 
of Required Education. 

In giving suggestion, whether 
of a systematic or of an irregular character, the 
physician should remember that the average in- 
dividual needs education that shall look to regu- 
lation of the emotional nature. Feeling run riot 
is the bane of both the mental and physical 
organism. 

Not suppression, but regulation, of ones emo* 
lions is the great desideratum. 



SALIENT FEATURES OF EDUCATION. 191 

It has been demonstrated that strong emotions 
of a disquieting nature are always pernicious if 
allowed to gain ascendency, while those of an 
opposite kind are clearly beneficial. We are not 
to infer that our proper course is to suppress the 
former and revel in the latter. A certain degree 
of anger, on occasion, though it may generate a 
toxin not altogether wholesome to the physical 
organism, is not to be condemned. The system 
needs some foes to keep its forces in good trim. 
Perpetual peace in both an individual and a 
nation is weakening and disintegrating. The 
internal dissensions which are common to pro- 
tracted peace quickly disappear in the presence 
of a foe, for the common interests, at such a time 
jeoparded, tend to establish solidarity of senti- 
ment and action. 

But unbridled emotion is always harmful, and 
it is against this that we ought to caution our 
patients. 

"Anger, anxiety or fear will poison the secretions of 
the body," says Dr. Arthur O. Sax; "anger or fright 
promotes a secretion of poison in the sac of a venomous 
snake and this is where the snake is ahead of man. We 
have no organ in which we may store the toxins which 
we develop for the same purpose perhaps as snakes and 
consequently we poison ourselves with the material 
which was meant for our enemies." 

It is true that a strong character is impossible 
without strong emotion. It is an expression of 
dynamic energy. 

"The ennobling difference between one man 
and another," says Ruskin, "between one ani- 
mal and another, is precisely in this, that one 
feels more than another." 

It is the difference between the rushing, push- 
ing, roaring, uncontrolled waste of power ex- 



192 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

pressed in the rapids of Niagara, and the silent, 
but tremendous, effect of the same power har- 
nessed and made to transmit electric energy great 
distances for useful purposes. 

Man does not want less feeling, less true emo- 
tion, but he wants it so controlled that it shall be 
a minister to mental and physical needs rather 
than a destroyer of mental and physical vitality. 

There are countless instances of disease, both 
organic and functional, caused by various disturb- 
ing emotions. My readers very well know that 
malignant disease is far more likely to develop 
under the influence of depressing mental states. 

The people need to be taught the tremendous 
influence of mental upon physical conditions. 

Women suffer more because their emotional 
nature is less disciplined than man's. They are 
ruled by feeling. Mainly from this cause women 
have become bundles of complaints. A well 
woman is becoming an exception. Women need 
to have their weaknesses pointed out and to re- 
ceive suggestion that shall lift them to a higher 
mental and physical plane. Once make them 
believe that their physical redemption lies along 
the lines of better self-control and they will grad- 
ually be raised to a healthier and happier state. 

4 'The part of wisdom as well as of courage," 
says Prof. James, ' 'is to believe what is in the 
line of your needs, for only by such belief is the 
need fulfilled." 

Men are just as sadly in need of education. 
The sense of restless energy impels the young 
man to action. He feels an uneasiness that 
demands expression. Instead of turning that 
energy into wise and useful channels he lets it 
run to waste in practices that, for the moment, 



POST-HYPNOTIC SUGGESTION. 193 

seem to satisfy. By continuance these customs 
become fixed habits and the man's moral and 
physical powers suffer deterioration. 

Our various appetites are doubtless given us for 
enjoyment as well as service. They need only 
direction and wise control. We should eat and 
drink wholesome things and not overindulge even 
in these. Every function of the body was in- 
tended to be exercised and when kept under 
wise regulation by volition such exercise min- 
isters to health and happiness. But excess de- 
stroys both and the moral nature — which is built 
up by volition — falls into ruin, carrying down the 
physical with it. 

Men need to have their weaknesses pointed 
out and to be impelled into healthier and happier 
living by the power of suggestion. 

Of all emotions that work pernicious effects 
upon the mind and* body fear is the most potent 
and destructive. There is probably no one who 
has not, at some time, felt its dominating power. 
Men and women of all classes and conditions are 
suffering its effects. Few realize its evil influ- 
ence, while fewer still know how to rid them- 
selves of it. Relief lies in the direction of sug- 
gestion, and nowhere else, 

I find a foeman in the road, called Fear : 
To doubt is failure ; but to dare, success. 

Post-Hypnotic Suggestion. 

A singular feature of the 
phenomena of hypnotism is known as Post-Hyp- 
notic Suggestion. In it we appear to find posi- 
tive proof of the duality of mind. It is available 
for curative purposes. 

For example, the patient, while in hypnosis, is 



194 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

told that, at a certain time, he will experience a 
sensation of a certain character, and, at the time 
appointed, surely enough, without recollection of 
the prediction, he does experience it. We will 
suppose he is told that a remedy about to be 
prescribed for his relief will, on its third repeti- 
tion, be distinctly felt to assist curative action as 
indicated in a sensation of warmth extending all 
through the body, and a sense of revulsion in the 
affected organ, and that these sensations will be 
succeeded by a consciousness of positive relief 
and an assurance of rapidly-returning health. 

Can you not see what an instrument for good 
such a suggestion may become ? 

I give this as a mere illustration. Of course 
the suggestion will be varied to suit particular 
cases. 

It will be found that most patients receiving 
such a suggestion will experience the symptoms 
mentioned and be correspondingly benefited 
thereby. 

The possibilities of post-hypnotic suggestion 
are very great, and he who most wisely avails 
himself of them will be most successful. 

The foregoing has be^en given in order to make 
our view of mental suggestion complete; but I 
want again to say that I rarely use hypnotism 
and that I am opposed to its frequent use under 
any circumstances. Suggestion without hypno- 
tism is to be preferred. 



V. 



The Practice of Mental Methods 

(continued) 



(195) 



"Tell him that his very longing 

Is itself an answering cry; 
That his prayer, 'Come, gracious Allah !' 

Is my answer, 'Here am I.' 
Every inmost aspiration 

Is God's angel undefiled ; 
And in every 'O my Father !' 

Slumbers deep a 'Here, my child.' " 



"Unconscious education is more powerful and lasting than 
conscious education. Habit goes farther than precept, and 
we must ascribe most of our successes with ourselves to the 
formation of good habits. 

"Accordingly, the way to check a bad habit is to form a good 
one in its place. Character represents but. the sum of one's 
habits."— Leavitt. 



'All being assumes form. Every thought, however'fleeting, 
tends to unite with feeling; every emotion, however vague, 
tends to unite with thought, becoming an idea— a thing of 
life, and taking form in the cosmic matter which is the 
matrix or mother principle."— M. Woodbury Sawyer. 



(196) 



CHAPTER V. 

THE PRACTICE OF MENTAL METHODS— Continued. 
THE PLACE OF SUGGESTION IN ROUTINE PRACTICE. 

A physician's experience consists largely of a 
routine of duties that are made bearable by a 
sense of suffering mitigated and disorders healed. 
The doctor goes through the daily grind with a 
degree of cheerfulness and courage incompre- 
hensible to the lay mind that may see only the 
melancholy and disagreeable features. 

But the physician who loves his work is never 
satisfied with following exactly the same course 
and using exactly the same remedies day after 
day. To him 

"Every day is a fresh beginning." 

The experience of yesterday must be im- 
proved upon. He utilizes the lessons of past 
failures and gathers all his powers for a new 
and more promising attack on his obstinate foe. 
He is continually studying and planning. 

Many innovations are suggested; many new 
remedies are offered. From among them he 
selects those which to him appear most promis- 
ing. He finds himself too often worsted to be 
satisfied with his present equipment. 

A means of cure that fits into the grooves of 
practice, that does not involve cumbersome 
apparatus and that can be utilized in the office 
and at the bedside, must be recognized as a 
desideratum, 

(197) 



198 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

Though I address myself directly to the phy- 
sician in that which follows, the directions ap- 
ply with equal emphasis to the healer whether 
a graduated physician or not, as far as he is 
qualified to put them into practice. 

USES OF SUGGESTION IN PRACTICE. 

Modern practice has a distinct line of demar- 
cation running through it and the two grand 
divisions are termed (1) Medicine and (2) Surgery. 

Demeanor of Physician. 

The physician commonly 
meets his patients either at his own office or at 
the bedside. 

The very courtesy with which the patient is 
greeted has the power of a suggestion in it. 
There, of course, should be an intimation of per- 
sonal poise and power in it which cannot fail to 
impress the patient and to pave the way for the 
curative suggestion that may follow. To the 
patient it also bespeaks interest; and since inter- 
est in turn implies sympathy, the sufferer hails 
it as a prophecy of help. 

The Examination. 

Means and methods of investiga- 
tion play an important role that the charlatan 
has been quick to recognize and utilize. The 
average patient is impressed by an array of in- 
struments and is mystified by their use in diag- 
nosis. The stethoscope, the speculum, the oph- 
thalmoscope and the microscope have a utility 
beyond, if not above, that for which they were 
designed, 



POSITIVE DIAGNOSIS. 199 

On the other hand, there is a suggestive power 
in a renunciation of all these, and an examination, 
the penetration of which appears to make all 
these helps unnecessary. 

We find, upon reflection, that we are daily 
employing suggestive therapeutics in our routine 
practice, in most instances without having recog- 
nized its true character. In the speech, in the 
expression of countenance, in the bits of civility, 
or the lack of them, we are preparing the minds 
of our patients to receive as truth the more direct 
assurances that may be given. 

Positive Diagnosis. 

Then, when we have examined 
our patient, the manner of making known our 
conclusions carries much weight. A spirit of 
uncertainty chills and paralyzes. During the 
progress of an examination the patient is usually 
a keen and wistful observer. He realizes that 
on the conclusions derived from it much of his 
weal or woe probably depends. It is a wise 
physician who remembers these truths and who 
seeks by word and look to disclose the recogni- 
tion of a chain of symptoms that mean much to 
the subject's discriminating vision. 

At the conclusion of an examination only posi- 
tive opinions carry much force. To express un- 
certainty in diagnosis or prognosis is always weak- 
ening. It is far better to be positive and err than 
to be wavering. You can be forgiven if wrong, for 
your very assurance will have done the patient a 
certain amount of good, even though it was only 
for the time. Clear notes are more pleasing 
than mere noises, for they are musical. It takes 
courage and confidence to be positive: anybody 



200 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 



can be negative. A positive conclusion, after a 
careful examination, smacks of skill and ability. 
Says Dr. Carpenter : 

"That the confident expectation of a cure is the most 
potent means of bringing it about, doing that which no 
medical treatment can accomplish, may be affirmed as 
the generalized result of experiences of the most varied 
kind, extending through a long series of ages." 

When succeeding to a case that has been 
dragging under the care of others until discour- 
agement makes a cure under existing circum- 
stances impossible, the patient must be infused 
with new courage if one hope to succeed. With- 
out violating any ethical principles it is possible 
to do this. The chief study should be fixed upon 
the best manner of compassing one's purpose. 

Diagnostic and prognostic conclusions that are 
jumped to will not be likely to impress; and it 
may not be wise to venture a positive opinion at 
the first visit. The lawyer prefers to reserve his 
opinion until he has had time to examine author- 
ities and reason out a conclusion. If contra- 
indications do not clearly forbid, the effect of 
withholding one's opinion may have a good 
effect. 

The Prescription. 

The prescription should be a 
finality. All the suggestions ought to lead up to 
it, so that at the last the patient's mind shall be 
riveted upon it. Indications of deliberate 
thought concerning the treatment have a whole- 
some effect. There is a period of evident un- 
certainty, during which the physician discloses 
an effort to differentiate; and then follows the 
final choice. The patient and friends are im- 
pressed by the mental action and interaction of 



THE PRESCRIPTION. 201 

the process — the play of mental forces — as the 
physician weighs physical and mental indications. 

Having chosen the remedy, its action is as- 
sured by giving the patient definite indications 
of what you expect from it. The remedy itself 
should not be disclosed. The deeper the air 
of mystery the profounder the effect. It has 
been a common practice with certain eminently 
successful physicians to work up their patients' 
minds to a high degree of expectation and to 
create a vivid conception of the promised action 
of the remedy before administering it. 

Such a practice is founded on psychic princi- 
ples and is to be commended. Besides, the 
effect is far more likely to develop what we seek 
if the remedy be carefully chosen and the sug- 
gestion correspond to the pathogenetic action of 
the drug. 

Do not forget that action is always more easily 
excited along lines of least resistance. 

It is wise to enter into an exegesis to the 
patient of the expected action of the remedy, 
and after doing this the effect is intensified by 
being most explicit concerning the directions for 
taking it. I have found good effects from hav- 
ing each dose of the drug put into a glass of hot 
water and slowly sipped. Patients have reported 
that they formed a real liking for such a draught 
because of the marked effect observed. 

Remedies given in any unusual way, as by 
hypodermic injection, are more pronounced in 
their action^ as I have demonstrated a thousand 
times. 

Precise directions with respect to the intervals 
between doses are of much value. I knew an 
old doctor, now dead, with little knowledge of 



202 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

medicine and no general education, whose suc- 
cess, which was quite wonderful, was due to the 
very causes just alluded to. His remedies were 
thought to have magical virtues, and they cer- 
tainly did appear to work some surprising cures. 
But the results were almost wholly due to the 
suggestions made, though I do not suppose that 
even he was aware of it. 

There is this to be said concerning the reme- 
dies themselves : None have so pronounced effects 
as those which the doctor himself dispenses. Drugs 
that come out of a store where every one can be 
served, and where the air is redolent with the 
emanations from them, do not carry the same 
influence as do those carefully put up by the 
physician and given out by his own hand, with 
explicit directions. 

Proprietary remedies, with general directions, 
are to be discountenanced. 

In connection with the prescription there are a 
thousand ways of projecting powerful sugges- 
tions that cannot fail to act with helpful energy. 

When once the principles of psychic impression 
are recognized \ one finds innumerable occasions to 
avail ones self of their aid. 

Bedside Visits. 

In house visits the opportunity to 
practice suggestion is equally great. The patient 
is usually in bed, and expectant. It is, say, the 
first visit. It may be that you come as a 
stranger, but more likely you come as one con- 
cerning whom the patient and friends have 
heard much. There is alarm in the household, 
an unfavorable outcome being feared. Agitation, 



FREQUENCY OF CALLS. 203 

fear, hope, grief have wrought their full measure 
of disturbance in the minds of all. 

Under such circumstances every word and act 
of the physician is full of significance to the 
patient and friends. How closely they scan his 
countenance ! Is there a ray of hope to be found 
in his face? He looks grave and perplexed: this 
must mean that he sees little chance for the 
patient. But hold, he has found a new line of 
symptoms. His countenance brightens. He 
had smiled before, but with an expression of 
pity and grief. Now it is plain that the smile 
carries abundant hope. Then comes assurances. 
The patient, though very ill, he thinks shows 
signs of beginning recovery. The hidden forces 
of nature have evidently acquired new energy. 
The prescription? Well, there are but a few 
remedies required — perhaps but one. They will 
fit into right places and give added power. 
" Courage, now, " he says, "we are in the broad 
sunlight when we thought we were under the 
cloud. All is well." 

Under such conditions we nearly always find 
that Health waits just around the corner. 

How little does the average physician realize 
the tremendous forces at his command, awaiting 
only deft manipulation to adapt them to his aid. 
He who recognizes them and learns the laws con- 
trolling their utilization becomes a real wonder- 
worker. THIS IS THE TRUE THAUMATURGY OF 
MEDICINE. 

Frequency of Calls. 

In carrying out suggestive treat- 
ment the patient ought to be seen at short inter- 
vals. The movement begun needs to be sus- 



204 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

tained. There will be a strong disposition on 
the part of the patient to drop again into the 
ruts now so deeply worn and he will have to be 
lifted out time and again and set on smooth 
ground. To secure co-operation in the attempt 
at restoration it may be advisable to make what 
will look to an economical patient like unneces- 
sary expense. There are many people who think 
a few office calls or house visits, distributed 
through much time, ample provision to effect any 
cure. If the patient be really unable to pay, the 
physician must do as he has always done : charge 
his services up to "profit and loss." But a 
penurious spirit on the patient's part will seri- 
ously handicap the physician's best efforts to 
make a cure. 

Be plain. Insist on having your own way in 
the treatment, and, if refused, decline the case. 
Your success as a physician at the last depends 
on your achievements, and you cannot afford to 
fritter away your energies on those who are 
determined to restrict your necessary attentions. 



VI 



The Practice of Mental Methods 

(continued) 



(205) 



" S'pose success don't come at fust ; 

What be you goin' to dew ? 
Throw up the sponge and kick yourself, 

An' go to feelin' blue ? 
Uv course you ain't ; your goin' to fish, 

An' bait, an' bait agin ; 
Bimeby success will bite your hook, 

And you will pull him in." 

' The power of mental concentration is a most desirable one, 
and yet it will prove a source of distress unless properly 
disciplined. The hysterical patient belongs to the wrongly- 
concentrating class. She sets her thought upon morbid 
sensations and unwholesome concepts. The most pro- 
nounced types of hysteria are oftentimes manifested in 
those of much mental and physical strength. They are 
examples of energy going to waste. They are the most 
obdurate class of patients. Convergent mental strabismus 
in women of strong volition and developed mind can be 
relieved only by clever management and oft-repeated sug- 
gestions of a graded character. These patients can be cured, 
but much time and effort are required to effect the desired 
result."— Leavitt. 

Let this be your teaching : " Anticipate nothing but good 
in the future. Burn all doleful prophecies ; they are lies. 
Some evil must befall you, but those about which you are 
certain will never come true. The Devil is no prophet." 



propr 
C. He 



—Frank C. Haddock. 

In a recent number of the British Medical Journal this 
frank admission is found : "Disease of the body is so much 
influenced by the mind that in each case we have to un- 
derstand the patient quite as much as the malady. This is 
not learnt in hospitals." 



(206) 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE PRACTICE OF MENTAL METHODS— Continued. 
IfON-ROUTIHE SUGGESTIVE TREATMENT. 

Thus far we have considered mainly a physi- 
cian's routine treatment and have pointed out 
certain features of it peculiarly open to the adap- 
tation of psychic impression. Now we will turn 
to more pronounced suggestion and offer certain 
modes of treatment, the effect of which has been 
repeatedly verified. 

But before entering upon a detailed relation of 
these it will be well to refer again to some prin- 
ciples of treatment that deserve to be empha- 
sized. 

It has elsewhere been said that a suggestion, 
to be most effective, should be given with energy 
and impressiveness. This feature of treatment 
is all-important. I shall not attempt to do more 
than lay down general rules of procedure, indi- 
cating certain features of treatment that have 
given me good results 

Darkness. 

Mind readers claim they succeed better 
in their tests when blindfolded than when mov- 
ing and reading with open eyes. The eyes of 
the clairvoyant are usually closed when she is 
"reading." Why? Because distracting sights 
are shut out by darkness. They would probably 
do better still with the sense of hearing dulled 
through muffling. 

(207) 



208 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

In concentrating the mind we seek to get as 
far away from the sense vibrations as possible. 
I often find myself closing my eyes when mak- 
ing a tactual examination of patients, and even 
when sitting alone in thought. In shutting the 
eyes we bar out much of the distracting world 
of physical phenomena and enter the realm of 
shadow, which we proceed to people according 
to our fancy. 

In pursuance of this theory and to insure the 
banishment of all diverting sights, we may put 
the patient into a dark room, or we may insist on 
closed eyes. 

With the avenues of vision in some such way 
shut off, the mind of the patient has less mate- 
rial upon which to operate and is more easily 
concentrated upon the suggestions that may be 
given. 

The suggestions themselves can be most con- 
veniently given by word of mouth, the utterance 
being slow and distinct, bearing to the sense of 
the patient an impression of sincerity and truth. 
Since the mind of one who is ill has less than 
the average amount of stability, attention is 
easily diverted. Accordingly it will be found 
advisable to occasionally recall the possibly wan- 
dering thought by sharp and forcible commands, 
like, * 'Listen, " * 'Now hearken, " ' 'Notice what I 
say, " etc. It is well to repeat a suggestion in 
the identical words, time and again, so that the 
ear may hold, and later reiterate to the subcon- 
sciousness, what the consciousness does not at 
the moment fully comprehend. 

The suggestions are given much greater force 
also by a few introductory remarks in the way of 
preparation for what is to follow. Dilate, if you 



DARKNESS. 209 



please, on the wretchedness of present conditions 
and give positive assurance of the restoration to 
ensue. Explain briefly the manner of its com- 
ing, in relief of pain and an increasing sense of 
health stealing into every part. Health is to 
grow out of unwholesome conditions; light is to 
dispel darkness; faith is to supplant despondency; 
and the fruits of the Spirit of Life are to become 
manifest. 

The character of the talk will be determined 
largely by the intelligence of the subject. The 
healer's success will depend in great measure on 
his ability to interpret his patient's character and 
to supply his peculiar needs. 

While in the darkness, an affirmation may be 
fastened in the mind by turning focused rays of 
light upon a slate or chart, whereon, in plain 
letters, the affirmation appears. One can readily 
fancy the effect of this when the written or 
printed suggestion is tersely put. 



As a Man Thinketh 



in his Heart 
S He" 



b i; 



Figure 14. Slate with Sample Suggestion. 

Another method of impressing, well adapted 
to office practice, is the use of the graphophone. 



210 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

The physician can make his own records, and, 
with slight expense, provide records specially 
suited to individual cases. 

The procedure is made most effective by use 
of the tubes. The words then come as though 
spoken loudly into the ears, and the impression 
is correspondingly strong. 

The same machine can thus be used both to 
soothe and to excite. It is capable of giving 
most pronounced suggestive aid to those who 
are not only confined to the bed, but even those 
who are objectively unconscious. For certain 
cases it is serviceable in office practice. 

A helpful suggestion repeated again and again 
cannot fail to contribute much aid in the cure of 
disease. 

Close tlie Patient's Eyes. . 

It is not always either ad- 
visable or possible to treat patients in a dark 
room. Fortunately we are able in other ways 
to shut out diverting and distracting sights. 

For ordinary office treatment I deem it best 
to seat the patient in a chair with a moderately 
low back. The physician should then take a 
position behind the patient and lay his hands 
upon the forehead and eyes. The position is 
convenient, modest, and, I may add, command- 
ing. It is one that the most sensitive woman 
would not object to. It is the most desirable 
position for suggestive treatment, whether the 
intention be to give the suggestions with, or 
without, hypnosis. 

Suggestion by Manipulation.^ r . . 

One of the most popular 

methods of administering suggestion is that com- 



SUGGESTIONS WITH VACUUM TREATMENT. 211 

monly known as Osteopathy. There is a certain 
amount of benefit to be had from the passive 
exercise that it affords, just as there is from 
massage, of which it is really another form. 
Men are more successful with it than are women, 
because they have more physical and mental 
strength. 

Digital pressure on either side of the vertebral 
bodies throughout the entire length of the spine, 
accompanied with an explanation of the good to 
be derived from such massage in the vicinity of 
the sympathetic ganglia, is sure to be of much 
service, especially to those who are neurasthenic. 

With regard to such treatment it will be un- 
derstood that the more stress put upon the sug- 
gestion of good to ensue, the better the result. 
There is little room to doubt that the beneficial 
effects resulting from all forms of manipulative 
treatment proceed from the psychic impression 
that they make. 

Suggestion with 
Vacuum Treatment. 

What has been termed ' 'Va- 
cuum Treatment," which is the application of 
cups to a part, most frequently the spine, falls 
within the same category. It is a mode of treat- 
ment from which much good may be had in 
many cases, especially to those with spinal 
lesions, provided the suggestion of rational 
effects be properly made. I have a few patients 
who regard it as a panacea. 

Suggestion with Electricity. 

I had been using elec- 
tricity a long time before I became convinced 



212' THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

that its true value was to be found in the energy 
of the suggestion that it gives. I now have no 
doubt of this. It is one of the best agencies for 
cure that the physician has at command. Every- 
thing associated with it has a psychic smack. 
First of all there is the fear with which many 
regard it. In school days they may have experi- 
enced one of its "shocks" with which the teacher 
loves to illustrate the electric energy, or from 
some "family battery" they may have taken a 
dose through the hands, and the sensation has 
left a memory of rather an unpleasant experi- 
ence. Then there is the thought that electricity 
lights our houses, runs our cars, kills our mur- 
derers, and flashes in the lightning that illum- 
ines the heavens in the darkness of a thunder- 
storm. 

The quiet energy of the regulated current, 
known to be so potent, is impressive. After a 
first gentle treatment most of my patients ex- 
press their emotions and testify to the mental 
effect produced by such an ejaculation, as: 
"Electricity is a wonderful thing, doctor, 
isn't it?" 

To those of my readers who have used elec- 
tricity with benefit, let me say that, if they will 
now distinctly associate with it the psychic 
thought, and seek by means of it to augment the 
power of curative suggestion, they will witness 
thaumaturgic phenomena such as would have set 
the old world ablaze with enthusiastic reports of 
Divine interposition in behalf of ailing humanity. 

Suggestion with 
the Inverted Plane. 

While I am mentioning some 



THE INVERTED PLANE. 213 

of the many means by which we may deepen 
curative impression I should not omit the In- 
verted Plane. Two-thirds of life is spent with 
the trunk of the body in an erect position. This 
means that those parts of the body below the 
cardiac level are all this time being easily sup- 
plied with the circulatory fluid, while those 
above the same level are receiving their supply 
at an expense of greater effort. Not only is this 
true, but we should remember, in the same con- 
nection, that the blood on one side is being lifted 
back to the heart against the force of gravity, 
while from the other side it is materially aided 
on its return by gravity. The result cannot fail 
to be a more or less unbalanced circulation, the 
results of which can plainly be traced in later life. 

I do not need to stop here to expatiate upon 
the ill-effects liable to result from such a natural 
partiality in the sanguineous distribution. My 
purpose is only to show that the possibility of 
harmful effects constitutes a basis for an exped- 
ient that greatly aids in administering curative 
suggestion. You may deny, if you will, the 
harmful tendency of the conditions mentioned, 
at the same time there would be no difficulty in 
convincing a patient of the possibility of harm 
resulting therefrom. 

My plan of treatment is to use the adjustable 
office chair, and, after placing the patient upon 
it in the dorsal position and lowering the leg 
support so as to prevent sliding when the head 
is depressed, give an incline of ten or twenty 
degrees. 

In this position the patient is allowed to re- 
main, if reasonably comfortable, for ten or fifteen 
minutes, during which time the suggestion of 



214 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

help from the treatment is being impressed. 
She is then returned to the horizontal for a few 
moments before being allowed to assume the 
upright posture. 

Of course this treatment is not adapted to all 
cases, and with old people it should be used 
with much caution, if at all. 

Suggestion Expedi- 
ents at the Bedside. 

In addition to certain of the ex- 
pedients already mentioned, in hospital and 
domiciliary practice, there are others of which 
the resourceful physician may avail himself. 
Among them are sponge baths of alcohol or 
water containing substances that will gently 
tingle when applied to the skin. A few drops 
of capsicum or cantharis in a pint of water will 
serve the purpose. If applied over the seat of 
the trouble it will better serve the purpose. 

The true effect of these, as of most other 
applications, including sinapisms, is derived from 
their psychic action. Anything of the kind holds 
the attention to the affected region, with the 
associated thought of cure. The action is much 
like that of most efficient remedies given inter- 
nally. The chief difference lies in dependence 
on the selective power of the latter and the 
direct application of the other. 

The objective and subjective attention brings 
about the curative movement. // is an axiom 
of demonstrable psychology that attention deter- 
mines action. 

Then there are the colored rays of light, the oft- 
repeated assurances, the cheerful faces of attend- 
ants, the suppression of all signs of serious 



SUGGESTION EXPEDIENTS. 215 

anxiety, the hanging of beautiful pictures and 
cheerful mottoes, the reading of selected stories 
and humorous bits, together with the thousand- 
and-one things which will occur to the mind of 
one who has faith in the curative power of mental 
suggestion. All these are useful in their several 
places. 



'What would'st thou? All is thine. 
The ways are opening for thee, 
The light of truth doth shine. 
Then halt not— question not— 
Be still and assert the I." 



(218) 



VII 



The Practice of Mental Methods 

(continued) 



(217) 



** At least ninety-eight per cent, of our mental life is sub- 
conscious. If you will analyze your mental operations you 
will find that consciousness — conscious thinking— is never 
a continuous line of consciousness, but a series of conscious 
data with great intervals of subconscious. We sit and try 
to solve a problem and fail. We rise and walk around, try 
again and fail. Suddenly an idea dawns that leads to the 
solution of the problem. The subconscious processes 
were at work. We do not volitionally create our own 
thinking. It takes place in us. We are more or less pass- 
ive recipients. We cannot change the nature of a thought 
or of a truth, but we can, as it were, guide the ship by the 
moving of the helm. Our mentation is largely the result of 
the Cosmic Whole upon us. Annihilate the Cosmos and 
our thinking would instantly cease." 

—Prof. Elmer Gates in " Mind Building,** 

44 Finally, if beneath a fanaticism and the extravagance of 
men blindly seeking relief from pain, some glimmering 
truth makes way, that truth also it must be for science to 
adopt and to utilize, to clarify and to interpret. By one 
method or other— and her familiar method of wide- 
spread cautious experiment should surely be the best- 
science must subject to her own deliberate purposes that 
intelligent vital control, that reserve of energy which lies 
beneath the conscious threshold and works obscurely for 
the evolution of man."— F. W. H. Myers. 



(218) 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE PRACTICE OF MENTAL METHODS— Continued. 
SUGGESTION IN SURGERY. 

Suggestion finds in surgery a rich and produc- 
tive field, but one wherein its value has thus far 
remained almost wholly unrecognized, its power 
but partially utilized. 

Surgery has wrought marvelously during the 
last generation. Its praises are sung on every 
side. " Great is Modern Surgery, " we may well 
cry. It has done much. 

It is customary to ascribe the tremendous 
advances in this department very largely to im- 
proved technique, and rightly so, I verily believe. 
But they have not come alone from innovations 
along the line of cleanliness. The process has 
been complex and, in a measure, inexplicable. 
I know a surgeon who gives little heed to the 
modern methods of sterilization, who in his pre- 
cautions is but slightly in advance of the opera- 
tor of three decades ago, but whose results, while 
not so free from suppuration, discomforts and 
deaths as those of the more scrupulous surgeon, 
are far better than those following in the wake of 
old-time surgery. 

Suggestion a Factor 
in Surgical Advances. 

Now, why is this so? It 
does not prove that modern precautions are 

(219) 



220 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

inessential; but, in my opinion, it does prove 
that other and hitherto unrecognized causes are 
playing important parts. Public confidence in 
surgical procedures is at its height. The faith 
of the surgeon in himself has become established. 
The atmosphere of the operating room, and, 
indeed, of the whole hospital, has been relieved 
of much of its fear-thought. Expectancy with a 
smile, instead of a tear, stands on tiptoe. 

This, my fellows, is one of the hitherto un- 
recognized causes of our present success to which 
I allude and the chief one that will now be 
pointed out. By recognizing the psychic factor 
as a distinct and valuable element of success and 
utilizing it to its full value, surgery may be 
carried to a still higher plane of utility. 

In an earlier part of this work I have made 
allusion to certain reprehensible excesses and 
defects to be found in surgical practice. These, 
when overcome, will enable it to find the place 
in disease cure wherein it rightly belongs and 
which it will be sure to fill with unexampled effi- 
ciency. 

Suggestion in the 
Surgical Examination. 

In an earlier part of the book 
I took occasion to point out, in few words, the 
essentials of a first surgical interview as seen 
from a suggestive standpoint. It may be well to 
refer to that in connection with what here follows. 

Suggestion During 
the Operation. 

To so important an event the 
patient comes with mingled feelings of fear and 
confidence. The mind of a thinking being can- 



SUGGESTION IN ANESTHESIA. 221 

not well be wholly cleared of fear in the presence 
of a crisis which strongly menaces physical ex- 
istence. Happy is the patient who can muster 
an array of cheerful feelings and who looks for- 
ward to the outcome with a good degree of 
assurance. Happy, also, the operator who refuses 
to see aught but a cure in prospect for the 
patient upon whom he is distinctly called to 
operate, and whose demeanor does not belie his 
feelings. 

Suggestion in Anesthesia. 

Do not be startled when I 
say that anesthesia is akin to hypnosis; and do 
not spurn the demand that we demean ourselves 
with circumspection in the presence of the former 
as well as the latter, through fear of prejudicial 
suggestion. 

The meaning of this is that I have a settled 
conviction that the anesthetic state, while not one 
of objective consciousness, is nevertheless one of 
suggestibility. 

We are to remember two things in this connec- 
tion-. (1) that the subconsciousness is ever alert 
and (2) that objective consciousness is not essential 
to effective suggestion. I state this as a theorem, 
and shall leave the proof to the clinical experi- 
ence of my readers. 

Suggestion in Giv- 
ing the Anesthetic. 

Before beginning the anesthetic, 
the anesthetizer, or, better still, the operator, 
should explain to the patient the course of action 
that terminates in complete narcosis, and give 
every assurance of entire safety under the careful 



222 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

administration of the anesthetic about to be 
undertaken. Explain the advisability of yield- 
ing quietly to the sensations, as they develop, 
with the knowledge that the feelings, while they 
may be unpleasant in certain particulars, are 
harmless. 

Right here let me stop to say that these instruc- 
tions are practical, as well as theoretical, they 
having been followed by me for years, and always 
with decided benefit 

Begin the anesthetic slowly; watch its effects 
and speak soothing words as you proceed. 

Treat the patient from the start much as you 
would if hypnotizing him. Declare that drowsi- 
ness is stealing over him, and that he will soon 
be fast asleep. Say : 

"Sleepy, sleepy, sleepy, slee-py, slee-py," 
drawling and intonating the words with a cadence 
that indicates drowsiness. 

* ' Almost asleep ; almost asleep. " 

And then, when you think deep sleep approach- 
ing, say, in sharp tones: 

"Fast asleep; fast asleep," at the same time 
slapping the patient lightly to see if the sugges- 
tion take effect. 

When evidently fast asleep, say in loud tones: 

* ' You are now fast asleep. We shall do only 
what is best for yo a, and when you awake it will 
be to begin a permanent recovery. New life will 
take possession of you. You are to be a 
well man!" 

* ' You will suffer no pain during the operation, 
and very little afterwards." 

' ' There will be no nausea and vomiting when 
you awaken." 

By using suggestion you will save a good deal 



SUGGESTION IN ANESTHESIA. 223 

of time. Besides, the patient falls into anesthe- 
sia much more readily and peacefully. 

It will not be necessary to await full narcosis 
before laying the patient on the table and doing 
the preliminary work. Say to him: 

1 ' Listen, now. We are merely going to get you 
ready. You will not be hurt. Indeed, you are 
already past the point of feeling. See? That 
does not hurt you (pinching lightly). Now, let 
us do just as we want to. We are your friends. " 

Talk thus, and work at the same time. You 
will usually find the patient perfectly tractable. 

Should he say that he knows what you are 
doing, tell him you very well know that, but that 
you are only preparing him so as to save time. 
This will satisfy. 

Suggestibility of the 
Patient in Anesthesia. 

It is commonly supposed that 
one who is objectively unconscious is wholly 
oblivious to environment. He certainly appears 
to be. You can pinch, slap and prick him with- 
out awakening much reflex action. You can cry 
in his ears and he will neither answer nor give 
particular sign of hearing. On waking he has 
no recollection of events. From these facts sur- 
geons have inferred that an anesthetized patient 
is for the time beyond the reach of mental im- 
pression. 

I ask you to recall that hypnosis furnishes a 
condition in some respects analogous. The 
patient is made unconscious and anesthetic by 
oral suggestion instead of toxic influence. In 
neither case is there conscious memory of occur- 
rences and experiences; and yet in hypnosis we 



224 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

have time and again demonstrated a perfect sub- 
jective memory. 

The reader need not be surprised when I say 
that I have often seen just as clear evidence of 
subconscious memory of events taking place in the 
anesthetic state. Moreover, this subconscious 
memory is the secret of much of the good effect 
following surgical procedure, A profound sub- 
jective impression is made which ultimates in 
vast good to the patient. 

It is upon these considerations that I base my 
advice to the surgeon to be as circumspect in his 
utterances and actions during the operation as 
he is with the patient in an objectively conscious 
state. This is an important suggestion, and I 
advise you not to spurn it. 

In the course of an operation complications are 
apt to arise seriously menacing the patient's life. 
At such a time the effect is far better if we insist 
upon perfect composure in all and allow no word 
of discouragement to escape the lips. Evident 
fright in operator and assistants may turn the 
scale against the patient 's life, this is no jest, and 

HE WHO IGNORES THE ADVICE DOES SO AT HIS PA- 
TIENT'S PERIL. 

When an operation is undertaken by a consci- 
entious surgeon it is expected to bring beneficial 
results, and he is bound to use every endeavor to 
elevate it to the ideal standard. Confidence 
should, therefore, be the predominant spirit among 
those who take part in it. Long faces and 
doubtful expressions are to be debarred. It 
should be a determined march straight to suc- 
cess; and the spirit of triumph ought to charac- 
terize it. 



DURING WAKING. 225 



Suggestion During Wak- 
ing from the Anesthesia. 

As soon as the patient has 
been returned to his bed it is well to renew sug- 
gestive dosing. He cannot swallow drugs, but 
he can swallow assurances and affirmations. Let 
consciousness dawn upon his mind in a flood of 
bright expectancy rather than of gloomy fore- 
bodings. 

None but an optimistic and cheerful nurse 
should be allowed with the patient. I have some- 
times thought that selected nurses ought to be 
detailed for this particular service. Let the suf- 
ferer's eyes, when they first open, fall upon a 
face filled with radiant hope and strong good 
nature. 

We give altogether too little attention, in our 
training of nurses, to inculcating the importance 
of these psychic considerations. They mean 
much to one who has taken upon herself the care 
of the sick and suffering, and far more to her 
patients. There is abroad too much pessimistic 
thought and feeling. It is too commonly con- 
ceded that 

The world has so much of sorrow — 
So much that is hard and bad. 

This is the superficial view. Look deeper and 
you will find that a large part of the appearance 
is due to illusion. I often repeat to myself a lit- 
tle verse learned in childhood: 

This world is not so bad a world 
As some would like to make it, 

And whether good, or whether bad, 
Depends on how we take it. 



226 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPV. 

Suggestion in After Management 

There is small occa- 
sion for me to say much under this head. The 
principles of management have been already 
clearly indicated. The whole atmosphere must 
be impregnated with confidence and good cheer. 
There should not be frivolity, but there should 
be good humor and plenty of it. 

The stage of recovery from an operation is 
peculiarly suited to the implantation of whole- 
some concepts and helpful ideas. The reader 
will recall what has elsewhere been said concern- 
ing the need among all who are ill of abetter con- 
ception of the important relations between mind 
and body. You can make it a period of school- 
ing that shall prove of inestimable value. The 
surgeon has a reputation for obduracy which he 
is here given an opportunity greatly to modify 
by becoming to his convalescent patients a 
teacher of truths of far more practical utility and 
worth than those attempted to be inculcated by 
the average religious instructor. 



VIII. 



The Practice of Mental Methods 

(concluded) 



(227) 



" There are innumerable perceptions of which we do not 
become conscious, on which all actions performed without 
deliberation, as well as habits and passions, depend." 

—Leibnitz. 

" The threshold of consciousness may be compared to the 
surface of a lake and subconsciousness to the depths be- 
neath it."— James Ward. 

" You can never tell what your thoughts will do 
In bringing you hate or love ; 
For thoughts are things, and their airy wings 

Are swift as a carrier dove. 
They follow the law of the universe- 
Each thing must create its kind, 
And they speed o'er the track to bring you back 
Whatever went out from your mind." 

— W. V. Nicum. 

** The subconscious guides me by suggestions which seem 
spontaneous, but which really arise from convictions of my 
subconsciousness as to my best course. An analogous action 
is noted in the subject acting under the force of a long-dis- 
tance suggestion, t He is not conscious that such a power is 
moving him to action. It seems to be wholly spontaneous." 

— Leavitt. 

" Admiral Farragut wrote his wife on the eve of battle : ' As 
to being prepared for defeat, I certainly am not. Any man 
who is prepared for defeat would be half -defeated before 
he commenced.' " 

" There is a continual play of forces on our mind, only a few 
of which ever reach conscious recognition." 






CHAPTER VIII. 

THE PRACTICE OF MENTAL METHODS— Concluded 
THE QUESTION OF ABSENT TREATMENT. 

There is no feature of " Christian Science" 
that has attracted so much ridicule as that of so- 
called "Absent Treatment." It is easy enough 
to understand that the encouragement afforded 
one under the power of disease, by another who 
may pose as a healer, is capable of doing much 
good so long as the one is near the other; but to 
expect mere thought to travel great distances to 
effect its purpose is quite another thing. Can 
curative concepts be established in the mind of 
one whom we have seen, but who is now at a 
distance, by the action of our volition ? 

Should the response to this question be in the 
affirmative, let us then ask: 

' ' Can curative thought find lodgment in the 
mind of one whom we have never seen, but who 
seeks absent aid?" 

Those who do not believe that suggestion has 
curative power under proximate relations will, 
of course, at once deny that it has power at a 
distance. 

But what about those who do accept the value 
of suggestive treatment? Will they deny the 
possibility of curative action at a distance ? 

Doubtless many will, and it is chiefly to such 
that I address my observations. Those not 
already convinced of the value of psycho-therapy 

(229) 



230" THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

would better pass this chapter, for to them it 
might seem grossly chimerical. 

The Question Is An- 
swered by Telepathy. 

I have attempted to show by 
conclusive evidence, in an earlier, chapter, that 
telepathy is an established fact. The thoughts 
and feelings of one mind can be communicated 
to another mind without the aid of physical 
sense. Just how the thought travels from one 
mind to the other is not known. We do not yet 
know even what thought is. But that in some 
way it leaps the barrier of space and penetrates 
to the depths of the subconsciousness there ap- 
pears now to be no doubt. 

It cannot yet be made to do so by all, at will; for 
the details of the laws of transmission are not 
known. 

We encounter many people who explain the 
alleged phenomena of spiritism by saying that it 
is mere mind reading. They are very willing to 
admit that another — a clairvoyant or psycho- 
metrist — can search our minds to the very depths 
and bring to light many things that had passed 
out of objective memory, while they stoutly deny 
the possibility of thought-transferrence between 
others. Consistency, thou art a jewel! 

Is it not clear that those who admit the value 
of suggestive treatment in general, and the possi- 
bility of thought-transferrence under any condi- 
tions, are in no position to deny the possibility of 
effective absent treatment ? I can see no alter- 
native. 

The truth is that no C07isistent person of thought 
and observation can today deny the possibility of 



THE THEORY DEMONSTRABLE. 231 

the communication of curative thought from one 
to another without regard to distance. 

My own position is anomalous. A few years 
ago I did not hesitate to denounce as irrational 
what now I am forced to admit as possible. 
Moreover, my own observations have led me to 
accept as a truth the once-decried absent treat- 
ment. Be assured that the change has not been 
wrought in a day, and not at all without clear 
demonstration of the truth of that for which I 
now stand. 

Admit the possibility of telepathy and you can- 
not rationally deny the possibility of absent sug- 
gestion. If one is possible the other is possible. 

Telepathy and Absent-Sugges- 
tion Stand or Fall Together. 

I do not hesitate to say 
that there is no longer a shadow of doubt con- 
cerning the possibility of thought transference. 
The dynamics of thought now becomes a sub- 
ject for study. Thought becomes recognized as 
energy in motion. 

The Theory Demonstrable, 

The phenomena of thought 
transferrence must not be limited to objective im- 
pressions, though even these are clearly demon- 
strable. The thought transferred passes to the 
subconsciousness and then rises more or less 
clearly to the threshold of consciousness. 

I have discussed these theories at sufficient 
length in an earlier chapter on Telepathy and 
shall not review them here. My present pur- 
pose is only to remind the reader that telepathy 



232 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

rests upon a demonstrable basis. There are the 
best of scientific reasons for believing in it. 

What Are the Conditions 
of Thought Transferrence? 

It is doubtless just as essen- 
tial for us to conform to thought conditions 
would we successfully impress the mind of an- 
other at a distance as it is for the telegrapher to 
conform to electrical conditions who proposes to 
send a wireless message. In both instances there 
is a medium of communication. It may be the 
same medium. It is supposed to be the univer- 
sal ether. But just what it is no one knows. It 
may be an electrical atmosphere vibrating with 
life, upon the waves of which are wafted the pul- 
sations of thought and feeling, the creations of 
ideation, as well as the coarser vibrations made 
by the sending instrument of wireless telegraphy. 

What is already known concerning thought 
transferrence was learned by experimentation, 
and learned, be it said to our shame, in the face 
of ridicule. 

THERE IS NO DOUBT THE TIME 
HAS COME. IN THIS DAY OF WON- 
DERS, WHEN WE SHOULD ALL CEASE 
TO CAST SLUR AND CONTEMPT 
UPON THE SERIOUS CONVICTIONS OF 
OTHERS— THE ALLEGED TRUTHS DE- 
RIVED FROM PROTRACTED STUDY 
AND EXPERIMENTATION — NO MAT- 
TER HOW FANTASTICAL THEY MAY 
AT FIRST APPEAR TO BE? 

It is evident that there are certain persons who, 
by organization, are peculiarly susceptible to 
mental impressions. They are veritable sensa- 









NEED NOT REACH CONSCIOUSNESS. 233 

tives, receiving and translating with peculiar 
facility. 

// is said that, by putting his ear to the ground, 
an Indian can catch the sound of distant feet. 
Just so these psychometrists appear to be able to 
turn a mental ear to the great void and hear the 
sound of distant thought. 

I am acquainted with a few persons peculiarly 
apt in thought reading. They claim that the 
faculty is more or less common to all and can be 
greatly cultivated. In order to become proficient 
we are told that it is necessary only to connect 
up the lines between the conscious and sub- 
conscious faculties. 

The subconscious mind is a universal receiver, 
and, in order to take thought in an objective 
sense, we have but to open communication between 
the two minds — to ' ' search the mind of the spirit. " 

A Suggestion to Be Effective Need 
Not Reach the Conscious Mind. 

In order that a sug- 
gestion become effective it need not reach the 
conscious mind, though probably it is given more 
power by reaching it. 

The subconscious doubtless receives, treasures 
and acts upon impressions that never rise into 
consciousness. Moreover, many of the thoughts 
and feelings that appear to spring up spontan- 
eously within us very likely have an extrinsic 
origin. They are projections from other minds, 
coming directly to us, or represent the concrete 
thought of many. 

There is no doubt in the minds of those who 
have gone deeply into psychology that we are im- 
mersed in a pulsating sea of thought. 



234 THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHO-THERAPY. 

What I have been leading up to is the essen- 
tial conditions of thought-transferrence between 
two minds. In wireless telegraphy the sender 
and the receiver are required to be so attuned 
that their vibrations shall harmonize. A similar 
harmony has to exist between minds in order to 
put them into communication. It is a species 
of selective affinity such as is manifested by the 
various physical structures, each taking on 
according to its adaptation, and passing onward 
those substances that do not fall under the power 
of its attraction. 

Hudson, in his ' 'Law of Psychic Phenomena, " 
annunciated a method of cure through absent 
treatment, the details of which I do not need 
here to recount. In his first edition he reported 
a large number of cures by means of it, without 
a single failure. 

Eight years subsequently I wrote the author 
asking if his later experience had confirmed his 
faith in the efficiency of the method. I quote 
from his reply: 

"In reply I have to say that ample experiment both 
before and since * The Law of Psychic Phenomena ' was 
written demonstrates the correctness of the general 
principles involved. I find, however, that success de- 
pends largely upon the healer's ability to come into 
telepathic rapport with the patient. This is not always 
possible between two strangers. Nor is it yet known 
by anybody just what is necessary to secure that con. 
dition. Sometimes it is perfectly easy to do so, at 
other times very difficult; and the reasons for success 
or failure are not yet definitely known. That is the 
only thing that militates against the system, and that 
must be overcome in the future by experiment and close 
observation. I have still undoubted faith in the system 
where proper conditions can be commanded.' " 

On the part of the sender there appears to be 



CONCLUSION. 235 






a consensus of opinion that quiet mental concen- 
tration, with an earnest desire to heal, are the 
elements of success. They are substantially those 
conditions prescribed for effective auto-suggestion. 

For the reason that the percipient is more 
likely to be in a receptive state at the quiet hour 
of night, that time is to be preferred. 

The more vivid and intense the thought, the 
more potent. 

The effect is heightened by an oral repetition, 
again and again, of the suggestion sought to be 
impressed. 

On the part of the receiver, a state of silent 
expectancy is all that is required. A will to take 
and to utilize puts one into the receptive attitude. 

THE END. 



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